


Whiskey Dark

by DesdemonaKaylose



Series: Bottom Shelf [2]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Agender Character, First Dates, Other, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Worldbuilding, blue and orange morality, canon typical creeperism, hisoka is pretty fucked up but you knew that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-05-13 03:52:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5693539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gon gave the door one last thoughtful look, and then smiled at Hisoka. It was blinding. In a literal sense, it was wide and handsomely curved. In a metaphorical sense, it was as cruel and benevolent as the heat of the sun itself, scorching and life-giving in equal turns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Whiskey Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Gon is older but still not over the age of consent (where I live). If it bothers you, please put your peace of mind first and click back. Since this takes place some time after Moscato, I've continued using "they/them" pronouns for Hisoka. I thought about switching back to he/him, but it didn't really feel right after the whole exercise of the previous fic.
> 
> This follows the anime, so whatever happens when the manga picks up again won't effect continuity here. Just so you know.

Children that grew up in the shadow of the Heavens Arena dreamed of spectacular battles—impossible weapons, smoke and lights and death and fame. Although no respectable nen user would dare to teach their craft to the uninitiated, the children of the city understood intuitively that there was a great power just beyond the reach of their fingertips. In the shadow of the Heavens Arena, magic was very real.

It was for this reason that Hisoka left the quiet of the tower to walk the evening streets, just outside of the pools of light dripping from storefronts and lamps. Citizens here worshipped power and danger and spectacle. It was the closest thing to a people of their own that Hisoka had ever known, for all that such things interested them. It was worth the inevitable inconvenience of recognition that came from spending any significant period of time in a single place.

Hisoka did not, as a general rule, spend much time in bars. There were too many human bodies in too close proximity, and here in the shadow of the arena there was always the chance that some overly enthusiastic fan with a death wish might identify them. The gift shop was still selling mementos of their fight with Gon after all these years, as it had become—they’d been informed—something of a cult classic for the audience still circulating the video tapes. Hisoka had briefly considered procuring themself one such copy, but they were given to travel light and had never been much for mementos.

Speaking of which. Hisoka tracked movement through the cavelike darkness, their eye on the figure of light jostling through the bar. It was lit dimly here, their preference for public meetings when such were necessary, a soft obscurity around the ceiling and a persistent brightness around the edge of each table, where tawny lights encircled everything. The illumination cast the patrons’ faces in strange ways, often unflattering and always amusing. Hisoka had been people-watching in their own hollow of quiet when the jostle around the door began. They remained unmoving, but intent. Their instinct for auras had always been a point of laziness; they had put very little effort into learning to recognize the person behind the power. But power, still, raced through the air like a living thing—muted, curious, ebbing and flowing over Hisoka, who thought they could just make out a familiar shape at its source. They returned their attention to their drink, slipping into a coy smile. A slight body bounded into their field of vision.

 “Aren’t you a bit young to be here?” Hisoka remarked, swirling their glass between two fingers. At any moment a dangerous combination of perspiration and gravity might drag it from their fingers, and then there would be only shards of glass among the seeping amber liquid.

“Oh, I’m not drinking,” Gon reassured them. “I told them I’m underage, it’s alright.”

Of the many things that made Gon such a fascinating creature, perhaps the oddest and most inscrutable was his effortless ability to charm. The very laws of nature seemed to spin on a single desire to make him happy, to win his smile. Hisoka had known guile, and manipulation, but at the heart of Gon Freecs there was nothing. Emptiness, a purity, a kind of magnetism. Hisoka rather thought it an honor to observe.

“Hmm,” Hisoka said, setting down their drink, “you do have a talent all of your own, don’t you?”

Gon didn’t seem at all interested in the compliment, or in the implied barb of it. “What are you doing here?” he asked, settling in the bar stool next to Hisoka with the easy confidence of a young man who is welcome everywhere.

“Business,” Hisoka said, “and pleasure, of course. One must never miss an opportunity to mix the two.”

“So you like this place, then?” Gon asked. He peered up around the rim of the room with new eyes.

“I rather like the whiskey,” Hisoka said, tracing a finger around the rim of their glass.

“Whiskey?” Gon echoed.

“Are you surprised?” Hisoka asked. They slipped on an innocent expression, turning their attention fully to the young hunter.

“A little bit,” Gon admitted. “I thought…” He brought his hands up, gesturing towards the whole of Hisoka, open palmed, “you would like those sweet drinks. With the little fruits in them. Since you like gum and cute things, you know.”

Hisoka paused, pressed a hand to their lips and hid a bubble of laughter. Gon looked taken aback, his brows furrowing. Distantly, from a speaker tucked away somewhere behind them, a singer was crooning of a dangerous desire for money.

“Sweetness has its place,” Hisoka said, after a moment. Their finger rested against their lower lip, delicately enough to suggest, lingering enough to draw Gon’s eye. “But this drink is my favorite. Too much sweetness sours itself.”

“What’s it like?” Gon asked, his attention narrowing to the curve of glass beneath Hisoka’s hand.

“Taste,” they said, the whiskey suspended treacherously from two fingers, just a handspan from Gon’s widening eyes.

“Oh no,” Gon said. “I’m underage. I promised Mito-san I wouldn’t drink anything while I was out on my own.”

A guardian, perhaps. Gon was very much a creature of his word; it would be pointless to push for weakness. And yet, when one could not climb the wall, one could simply circle the city.

“Hmm.” Hisoka dipped the tip of one elegantly manicured finger into the glass, lifting a sheen of liquid and one glittering droplet into the space between the two of them. “Then don’t drink,” they said.

Gon’s eyes flittered between Hisoka and the shining fingertip, where that droplet clung—at any moment it might escape, a fleeting moment of promise too easily shaken into nothingness. He hardly blinked, leaning a hairsbreadth closer, his whole body shifting with interest. Hisoka smiled widely.

“You can’t possibly become intoxicated from a taste,” they remarked, feigning disinterest. “Which is, I’m sure, the intent of your promise.”

The sheen of whiskey glimmered. Gon sucked in a sharp breath and dipped in, enveloping Hisoka’s fingertip in warm suction. There was the briefest instant of gentle sensation, tongue brushing skin, the galaxy of nerve endings in that digit alight with it, and then Gon made a sharp noise of distress and threw himself backwards, toppling off his seat in his haste to escape the flavor. Hisoka was all but blind to everything after that impossibly perfect moment of sweetness, though. Their eyes had slipped closed under the gentle onslaught, muscles from chest to thighs flexing and stretching with escasty. They moaned, so lowly that the sound disappeared under the ambience of quiet voices and rumbling bass guitar.

By the time that Gon had scrambled to his feet, one elbow on the table’s edge to lever himself upright, Hisoka’s eyes had reopened into pleased crescents. They let out a breathy little sigh, watching the young man intently as he righted himself on the stool and made an extremely displeased face.

“Ughck,” Gon said. “That tastes like death.”

Hisoka lifted their finger to their lips to suck, the flavor coming away dull and subtle with cooling saliva. They made a sound of absolute pleasure. “It does,” they hummed, “doesn’t it?”

In the center of their glass a mountain of ice rose like an iceberg in treacherous waters, pale against the dark liquid. Hisoka took a drink of it, eyes slipping closed. When they opened them again, Gon was watching in equal parts disgust and fascination.

“Tell me how it felt,” Hisoka said, lips brushing the rim of the glass.

“It burns,” Gon said, “but like ice. And it tastes _really_ bad,” he added mournfully.

There was a certain satisfaction in pain, a joy in suffering with purpose, that they thought Gon might understand in time. For now they only nodded in agreement, experiencing vicariously that first sip, remembering the past. Hisoka spent very little time in recollection, save the few pretty baubles they had carefully stored away, perfectly complete and divorced from any narrative of their life—beauty isolated and suspended in time. They had hated the taste, the first time; how or why was irrelevant. The memory of that hatred was now a beautiful thing, too.

“It has a darkness,” Hisoka said, “like liquorish, I think. Like a promise of revenge simmered down to coals. A sharpness like an edged weapon, ready to slice the tongue in two.”

“It kind of sounds like you want your drink to fight you,” Gon said, bemused.

“All things are struggle,” Hisoka replied, treating the hunter to an overly serious look.

“I thought everything was a performance?”

Hisoka shrugged, airily. “That would certainly be an interesting way to look at things.”

Gon frowned. “But you were the one who said it.”

Hisoka made a little disinterested noise and took another burning sip of their drink. Their contact would be here soon, no doubt, but they were significantly less interested right now in Illumi Zoldyck than the lovely creature in the seat next to them. Perhaps that would change once Illumi arrived. Perhaps not, though—Hisoka was noticing that their whims always seemed to flow towards Gon, even when other things might have been more interesting to them in other situations. Gon diverted even the overwhelming ocean with the purity of his particular gravity. Hisoka found their own persistant interest, itself, interesting.

“Well,” Gon said, standing, “I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

Hisoka tilted their head. “I assure you,” they said, “your company is always welcome.”

“Really?” Gon said. He tilted his head right back. “That’s good? I think.”

It struck Hisoka as too random, all at once—Gon was certainly given to his own whims at times, but Hisoka knew him to be wary enough, in his own way, and too simple to mistake Hisoka’s nature for anything less that intimately dangerous. Very few people ever stopped to chit chat with them. Even fewer survived the attempt. What, then, was important enough to draw Gon inside this particular establishment?

“Why did you come here,” Hisoka asked, “in the first place? I take it you don’t make a habit of wandering into strange bars.”

“Oh,” Gon said, snapping his fingers, “I totally forgot! I actually came in here to see you.”

Hisoka leaned back in their seat, interest peaked. “Me?”

“I thought you could help me with something.”

“Ah,” Hisoka said, tapping their cheek, “you came all the way in here to ask me for a favor, then, probably with nothing to offer me in exchange.”

“Yep,” Gon said, shameless. “But I don’t like to owe people for things, so you tell me what you want in exchange and we can make a deal!”

“Anything I want?” Hisoka hummed.

“No, of course not.” Gon smiled. “I don’t mind anything professional, but I won’t kill anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

Hisoka looked the young man up and down, tongue sliding over their lips. He was growing older, stronger as well, his eyes at times harder and darker than they ever had been before. The terrible wild nature within him remained almost tangible, like a vein beneath the surface, blue and promising and impossible to touch without distressing the body. How old was he now? Fifteen? Sixteen?

“Suppose,” Hisoka said, “I ask you for something unprofessional?”

“What,” Gon said, “like a date? I’ve traded people for dates before.”

“Have you?” Hisoka said, eyes narrowing. There was a particular oddness there that interested them, something just slightly off center from what it should have been. A boy his age doesn’t usually understand dating in those economical terms.

“Sure,” Gon said. “I’m pretty good at dating.”

Hisoka lifted their brows. “Regardless, what makes you think I would be interested in a date with you?”

Gon rocked back on his heels, a thoughtful expression twisting his pretty face. “Well, you’re a fanatic, aren’t you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Like the ladies on Whale Island,” Gon explained. “They used to take me on dates. They said it was a good way to spend time with people you like. You like me, don’t you?”

What a question to ask a person like Hisoka—and yet, why not ask it? The smile returned. All the delicacy and dressing of normal conversation carelessly discarded, just like that, cheerfully gone. Most people avoided direct questions for fear of receiving lies in answer. Gon probably hadn’t even considered the possibility.

“Of course,” Hisoka purred.

“I thought so,” Gon said, nodding to himself. “Sometimes they used to make the same sounds you do, when they kissed me. And you’re not a lady, but you’re Hisoka, and so I figure you can be anything you want to be.”

Hisoka thought briefly to their own youth, rolling back the years in their rusty memory. Had they ever lived such an effortlessly populous, busy life? No, they thought not.

“I’ve never dated anyone,” Hisoka remarked, opening one hand as if to mime releasing a thought into the atmosphere, “did you know?”

“Wow,” Gon said. He straightened up. “Never? But I’m sure you were cute when you were young, weren’t any ladies interested in you?”

“Not ladies… no,” Hisoka replied. They waved away the whole topic, uninterested in peeling open the past any further. “I’m really rather shy, you know. I don’t spend much time in company.”

Of the generously two people who they might consider naming friends, neither was around on a terribly regular basis. Hisoka was perhaps as much the definition of a loner as one could be, adrift high above the world and untethered. That was the place in the world where they belonged, the only place for them. They turned their attention back to Gon, sharpening.

“Suppose I simply decide to kill you,” they asked, “instead? I am fickle, after all.”

“Yeah, I guess you could,” Gon said, thoughtfully. “I don’t think I could stop you. But you won’t.”

“Oh?”

Gon shook his head. “There are certain kinds of people who will destroy the things they like because they don’t know how to be happy, and there are certain kinds of people who will hurt the people they like because they’re afraid, but I don’t think you’re afraid of anything, and I think you always know what you want.”

“Maybe what I want is to kill you,” Hisoka pressed, leaning in closer. Close enough to feel the way that Gon’s breaths disturbed the air, close enough to see the shadows in his irises. In the amber dimness of the bar, they were golden and dark.

Gon remained unmoved, unflinching. “Is it?” he asked.

The boy stood there as solidly as stone, physically unguarded—so different from the last time he had stood in Hisoka’s presence, but then it had been a long time, hadn’t it? And Gon was ever learning. They held his gaze, close enough for so many things.

“No,” Hisoka answered at last, breaking into a smile. “If you can take me at my word.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Gon said. “You don’t care what you tell people. But you’re pretty straightforward, actually, now that I know you.”

“Am I?” Hisoka said, their smile taking on a dangerous slant.

“Well sure,” Gon replied. “A cat is always a cat, isn’t it? Things that are true to their nature are always safer than things that aren’t. People,” he went on, expression hardening, “sometimes make choices that they don’t have to make. That’s what’s dangerous.”

 _And yet you’re always surprising me_ , Hisoka thought, intrigued. _Even in your simplicity_. _But perhaps that’s a kind of danger all of its own._

“Anyways,” Gon said, brightening up again, “do you want a date, or something else? Like I said, I could help with something hunter related if you wanted.”

“I admit you have me curious now,” Hisoka said, drawing back at last from their tense proximity. “I suppose I’ll accept a date. After all, it’s not as if I’ve ever tried it before.”

The ghost of a past pleasure rose up in Hisoka’s mind as they spoke: a windy York Shin street, the phantom taste of moscato—intimacy, connection, beauty and brightness and perhaps even a brief spell of happiness. Perhaps this, yes, this would be another kind of intimacy. A thing shared.

“What precisely,” they asked, “am I trading this for?”

“Ah!” Gon fumbled in his pocket to reveal an empty key chain, looking abruptly sheepish. “My hunter license was stolen,” he admitted. “I need to borrow somebody else’s to get into the chatroom. Normally I’d borrow Killua’s, but he’s in a different country right now and I’m kind of in a hurry…”

Hisoka blinked. “All this,” they said, “for such a simple thing?”

“It’s important to me!” Gon replied. “At first I only wanted to become a hunter to find my dad, but now I’ve seen so much—I’ve done so many amazing and awful things—I just don’t feel like I can go back to not being a hunter. It’s important.”

Hisoka finished off their drink, slid the empty glass aside.

“As it happens,” they said, “you’re in luck. My license was suspended for improper voting during that business with the election, and I only recently had it reactivated.”

“Alright!” Gon said, pumping a fist. “Thank you!”

Hisoka paused, momentarily distracted. There was a massive power approaching the bar, insidious and seeping. There were precious few people in the world with power like that, and only one of them was expected in this city. Hisoka smirked.

“You had better go,” they said, pointing lazily at the rear exit of the building, barely visible in shadow. “As much as I would love to see him angry, my guest really cannot be trusted to leave my toys intact.”

Gon tilted his chin up, as if he were sniffing the air. “Is that Illumi?” he said, brows furrowed. “I still haven’t forgiven him for the way he treated Killua.”

“Would you like to fight him?” Hisoka asked. “You’re not strong enough yet, I don’t think.”

“A little,” Gon answered, with somewhat guarded honesty. His eyes flickered towards the door. “But not now. There’s no point in it.”

“Then you had better go, hadn’t you?”

Gon gave the door one last thoughtful look, and then smiled at Hisoka. It was blinding. In a literal sense, it was wide and handsomely curved, and it looked right on his face. In a metaphorical sense, it was as cruel and benevolent as the heat of the sun itself, scorching and life-giving in equal turns. Hisoka marveled at it, surprised to find themself on the receiving end of such a thing.

“Come find me tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be at the dock, helping load the St. Iudas.”

He bounded away, with that, his shape dissipating into shadow just as the front door cracked open. In a moment the weight of his presence had disappeared as well, taking the memory of that scorching smile with it. Hisoka breathed out a slow breath and left the moment behind them, moving seamlessly into the now, where Illumi was gliding towards them through the crowd of people like some regal demonic prince. Hisoka flashed a smile of their own.

They felt the echo of brightness on their own wicked lips, borrowed, perhaps, for a short time.

 

 

 

Hisoka knew all about anticipation. The dream of a future fight, fantasy, expectation—a meeting with a person of interest. Often the anticipation was better than the payout, the delay more lovely than the gratification. Hisoka considered, walking the streets down to the edge of the sea, simply leaving town. It wouldn't be the first time they had sabotaged their own plans in order to preserve the sweetness of a fantasy. And yet, the morning was as lovely as the boy who waited on the other side of it, and while if they left town things would be exactly as they made them from that moment on, here the world was still brimming with the potential to startle and amaze. It was one of those days you sometimes get in coastal cities, where the shadows sink with improbable coolness while the great plains of sunlight across the world grow ever warmer. A morning of contrasts, they thought idly.

Hisoka paused on the sea wall above the docks, observing the complex rhythms of bustle and work below them. Out on one of the larger ships there was Gon, unmistakable in the crowds, at home anywhere his feet landed. Hisoka was content to observe for some time, alone on the ledge of the wall, until Gon spotted them. It must have been a change in the winds. Gon looked up from his work and scanned the horizon until his sight alighted on the waiting figure; his arm went up, he waved furiously. He jumped a couple times. Hisoka's lip quirked upwards as they entertained the idea, again, of simply leaving—this time, just for the fun of it. And again, there was something... more drawing... about the present, and the tableau below. Something inexplicably preferable about the young hunter enthusiastically trying to get their attention. Hisoka examined the feeling briefly, found no perfect explanation, and promptly lost interest in the whole exercise. Gon was waiting.

In the time it took Hisoka to jump from their perch and readjust the creases of their clothing, Gon had already scaled the dock and arrived, panting, in front of them.

“You’re earlier than I thought you’d be,” Gon said.

“Hmm. Should I take that as an insult?”

Gon shook his head. He pointed somewhere over Hisoka’s shoulder, into the city. “There’s a library branch not too far from here,” he said, “if you’ll go with me, it shouldn’t take long at all.”

Hisoka gestured politely at the path beside them, allowing Gon to take up the lead. Crowds didn’t part for the young hunter the way they did for Hisoka, but it was amusing to watch him duck and twist to follow point after point of least resistance. After they had gone some ways into a less packed area of the city, Gon fell back into a closer step.

“What did you talk about with Illumi last night?” he asked. Perhaps he was only making conversation. It was terribly unlikely that he had anything more sinister at heart.

“He was only looking for information,” Hisoka replied. “Such a shame, too. I’ve had nothing to do for weeks.”

“Oh,” Gon said. “But you’re friends, aren’t you? It must have been nice to see him.”

“Sure,” Hisoka said, shrugging. “But he never stays long once he’s decided you don’t have what he needs. I’m afraid I was of no use to Illumi-darling last night.”

“But you’re friends,” Gon repeated, frowning now. “He should want to spend time with you no matter what you can do for him.”

“Everyone wants something,” Hisoka said. “You, for example, are spending time with me because you need this.” They waved their hand and conjured their hunter’s license like a playing card, flashing it between fingers for a moment before promptly disappearing it again. “Once people have what they want, they generally have no use for you anymore.”

Gon seemed troubled by the explanation. He kicked at a loose bit of gravel on the sidewalk, forehead scrunched in thought. “But I don’t think that’s true,” he said, at last. “I don’t want anything from Killua, and I love to see him.”

“What you want is company,” Hisoka replied, “a temporary balm for the ache of loneliness.”

Gon pursed his lips. “But even then, I’ll never be done with him, because I always want his company! Even when I’m not lonely, I still like to see him.” He considered this for a moment, silently, before looking up again at Hisoka. “I think you have bad friends,” he announced. “I think you need better friends.”

Hisoka stared at the road ahead of them, refusing to look down and risk meeting Gon’s eye.

“You only say that because you don’t like Illumi,” they said.

“Well,” Gon admitted, rubbing his cheek, “it’s true that I don’t like him much.”

They were nearly to the steps of the library when Gon spoke again, walking more closely beside Hisoka than he had ever deigned to before.

“So what do you want from me, then?” he asked.

Hisoka did look down, at that, but Gon’s attention remained on their destination, uninterested in whatever his companion might do. It was in that moment that Hisoka realized, belatedly, Gon’s guard had never properly come up. The last time the two of them had walked through a city together Gon had been a prickle of nerves, subconsciously tensed to spring back at the first sign of aggression. It was how everyone who knew Hisoka held themselves, enemy and ally alike, just the turn of a screw away from flight. If they struck now—if they put aside all the fantasy and anticipation of a future and simply _struck_ —would Gon even be able to dodge?

It seemed that Gon truly had taken them at their word. Or, not at their word, perhaps, but at their nature.

“You’re much too entertaining to leave be,” Hisoka murmured, eyes narrowing.

Gon nodded, thoughtfully, and skipped up the steps to the door of the library. As he held it open for Hisoka, one hand on the aging wood, he said, “That’s not so different then, is it?”

“From what?” they asked. Here, in the shadow of the building, the air was so very cool. It seemed impossible that such a dark coolness could exist in the same morning as the endless warmth of the sunlit streets. And yet, the world was just strange enough to hold both.

“From my friends,” Gon answered. He glanced inside, and added, “You should hurry up, it looks like there’s only one computer free.”

That morning was the last that Hisoka saw of Gon for quite a long time. Gon disappeared into the countryside with the information he had been seeking and left Hisoka, as ever, a solitary figure among the multitude of human life in the shadow of the Heaven’s Arena.

Hisoka remained in town for a while, and when the uneventfulness of life there became too much to put up with, they left. They weren’t one to waste time on being disappointed.


	2. Wine Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gon knows that nature can be terrible as well as beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well it looks like I'm really doing this so sit tight and have a nice valentines day while you're at it  
> Written mostly to [ this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnTFRa1sSf4) song

Hisoka arrived in Swamp City just in time to miss the flapping coattails of Chrollo Lucilfer as he departed the place. They watched their quarry escape into the skyline not for the first time, but one could hope this time might at least be the last. It was an afternoon heavy with the promise of storm from the east, as if the clouds themselves were also chasing Chrollo across the world, while Hisoka lingered in the airship harbor far longer than necessary, watching the balloons disappear into the brightness of the horizon. They considered booking a pursuant flight of their own, but the flavor had all gone out of the chase now. Chrollo had covered his tracks too well.

A roll of greenery spread out from beneath the air harbor, dense and endless in every direction. The city’s name, they suspected, was no coincidence. It was difficult to imagine anyone willingly spending time here, and yet, where else to go? Back to the Heaven’s Arena? Hisoka frowned, elbows folded over the railing of the air harbor’s second floor, and observed their thoughts yearning back more to a person than any place. Back to Heaven’s Arena, indeed, where they had last encountered Gon. Where, if someone had half a mind to, any search for Hisoka might begin. Perhaps in time Gon would need them again?

As if summoned by those thoughts, a swell of power began to build against Hisoka’s back—from one of the docking ships, somewhere behind them, of a strength that offered the possibility…

_Of course_ , Hisoka thought as they straightened up in interest, those thoughts couldn’t have summoned anything. If they had the power to do that then Gon would have found Hisoka months ago, when they first began to return with persistence to his memory. Today was certainly not the first time Hisoka had felt that particular hunger rising.

Docking now was a ship in from a city to the north, and from their corner of the observation deck Hisoka kept an eye on the concourse, their back now to the sky. When Gon disembarked—and he did, after all, like a dream stepping into life—his eyes came up to find Hisoka’s immediately. There was the surge of a crowd and no little physical distance between the two of them, but Hisoka was certain that when they smiled Gon could see it. They could feel it. Like a string stretched taut between them, vibrating against the movement of the world. Just then a companion touched Gon’s shoulder, gently, breaking the connection, and all at once the feeling was gone. Hisoka ducked their head and abruptly returned to the panorama below, where the farthest edge was growing dark with the shadow of rainclouds.

“Hisoka!” they heard the familiar voice shout, and then again, closer, “Hisoka!”

Hisoka said nothing. The staircase up to the observatory floor creaked with the force of Gon’s quick steps, and then all at once the young man was behind them, bouncing on his heels. Hisoka closed their eyes and let out a sigh, enjoying the moment before this present changed into another present.

“Hisoka!” Gon said, urgently, “I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long!”

Hisoka narrowed their eyes at the glass, without turning. “Away?”

“From you,” Gon said, setting down his pack. He was too preoccupied with the straps and pockets of it to see how Hisoka’s reflected expression twitched and pulled strangely at that admission, which was all for the better. “I’ve been waiting to run into you,” Gon added, “so we can finally have our date.”

Oh. What a phrase. Hisoka’s chest swelled with heat and interest, a sensation exquisite enough to distract them for a moment from the implication of those words. They cracked open one eye and peered back at Gon.

“Hmm? But haven’t we already?”

“No, of course not!”

Hisoka stretched briefly, releasing the sweet tension of their muscles, and settled back into catlike ease. They turned at last to look at Gon, who had grown as beautiful as they had ever cared to imagine, oozing power and energy from every handsome angle.

“That morning I walked with you,” they said, “to the library. Wasn’t that our date?”

Gon shook his head. “No,” he said again, growing visibly distressed. “That’s not at all what a date is!”

Hisoka considered the young hunter in front of them, bouncing on the flat heels of his boots, and realized too late that they had made a tactical error. Gon had not come back to the city, and so Hisoka had drawn their own conclusions. The mere borrowing of a license had seemed such a trivial thing—when Hisoka knew that _Gon_ knew that they were unusually fond of him, and of course one’s negotiating power is reduced when the other party knows your position too well—that one morning’s pleasant walk had seemed to them an appropriate bargain. Hisoka had neglected to account for certain vital factors. They had forgotten how seriously Gon took everything, even the trivial.

If they admitted now that they had carelessly assumed Gon would supply the bare minimum on his end of a deal, the results would be undesirable. It wasn't a question of retribution—what could Gon do to them, after all, that Hisoka couldn’t manage? He was strong, but certainly not that strong. Hisoka fought to keep a thoughtful frown from twisting their lips. In truth, the trouble was that Hisoka didn’t want Gon to know they had underestimated him in that way.

In truth, it was that Hisoka didn’t want Gon to look back on this, one day, as a justification to give less than his all. Not when Hisoka wanted all they could get, and still more.

“I thought perhaps you were too young to know the difference,” Hisoka lied.

“Oh,” Gon said, relaxing somewhat. “Come on Hisoka, I’m seventeen now, I’m not a little kid.”

“You were sixteen when you made that promise,” Hisoka pointed out.

Gon crossed his arms, looking every bit the self-absorbed twelve year old he had been when they first met. “I told you I was good at dates,” he said. “I know the difference.”

“Apologies,” Hisoka said, with a smile that felt warm and secret on their lips. “Then you still intend to honor the agreement?”

“Well yeah,” Gon said. “How long are you in town?”

“I don’t know,” Hisoka replied. “I was thinking about leaving when you arrived just now.”

“Don’t do _that!”_ Gon said. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again. Will you stay three days? Please?”

“Mmm… For you,” Hisoka agreed. They shrugged one shoulder lazily. “I suppose I can find something to entertain myself for a few days.”

Gon clapped his hands together. “Thank you! I just have to take care of a favor for Kurapika and I’ll be all yours.”

“All mine,” Hisoka echoed, licking their lips. “Ah, if only.”

Gon didn’t seem unduly bothered by the comment. His attention was already on the floor below him, scanning the crowd for his companion from the ship. “I’ve got to go,” he said, picking up his pack. “Where are you staying? I’ll come get you when I’m done with this.”

Hisoka thought briefly to the hotels they had passed on their travel through the city and named one at random. They could afford anything and likewise could stand anything, although luxury was no enemy. Hisoka had slept in penthouses and dumpsters and everything in between in the surviving of three decades.

After Gon departed Hisoka took their leave of the air harbor. The frustrating specter of Chrollo was a pale thing in comparison to the vibrancy of Gon, alive and present and intent on Hisoka for even a brief window of time. The horizon held little interest now. In time, when Gon had left them, its appeal might return.

 

 

When the knock came at Hisoka’s door, they were in the middle of placing the last arched roof panel in a towering palace of cards, and so it seemed a simpler thing to simply pull the handle with a strand of bungee gum than to stand up and get the thing themself.

“Wow,” Gon said, as he stepped into the room, “that’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

Hisoka peered between two of the palace’s towers. Gon looked about the same as he ever did, although perhaps more recently scrubbed than usual. There was a bag on his shoulder.

“I had to entertain myself somehow,” Hisoka said, a touch reproachfully.

“Haven’t you been out of the hotel today?” Gon asked.

“You didn’t tell me when you were arriving,” Hisoka said, placing the last card into position. “Perhaps with your next date you’ll be more specific.”

Gon had the grace to look a little sheepish, but rallied almost immediately. “Here,” he said, rummaging in his bag, “I brought this for you.”

He opened his hands, revealing a beautifully delicate arrangement of wild flowers pinned to lace. It was unlike anything Hisoka had seen before. They flicked the center of the card palace, toppling it entirely, and stepped over the fluttering remains to get a better look at the gift.

“How unusual,” they said. “May I see?”

“It’s yours,” Gon said, with a smile. He carefully dropped the arrangement into Hisoka’s waiting palms. “Since you’re leaving the city tomorrow—you are, aren’t you? I didn’t think it was a good idea to get you anything long lasting, when you’d just have to leave it behind.”

Hisoka crushed one of the impossibly small pink buds, running their fingers through the spray of petals. Fast fading flowers. They would be no good for a bouquet, nearly as soon withered as plucked. The most beautiful kind of flowers, the kind that faded in mere hours.

“Wherever did you get it?” Hisoka asked.

“There’s a stall in the market downtown,” Gon said, “I saw it yesterday while I was asking around for Kurapika’s friend. The lady who owns it says that they don’t sell many of these since they fade so fast, mostly they go to collectors who dry flowers.” He cupped his hands around Hisoka’s, tilting them down for another look. “They seemed like you,” he added, “like something you would appreciate.”

Ephemeral. Strange. The pleasure of a brief moment. Gon’s instinct was as unerring as ever—it was indeed the sort of thing Hisoka appreciated.

“Thank you,” Hisoka said. They withdrew their hands, pulling the gift in closer to themself. “I may yet forgive you for stranding me in this dreary city.”

While Hisoka carried the flowers over to the room’s writing desk, Gon seemed to be appraising their figure. Hisoka preened a little bit, under the attention, smoothing their hair and the fabric down the gentle curve of their hips. They thought they looked especially nice today, had spent quite a long time in front of the mirror getting the wings of eyeliner just right. The earrings too, which they only wore to visit their favorite people. They were more than happy to let Gon get an eye full of them, to whatever length his little heart desired.

“You’re going to need to change shoes,” Gon said.

Hisoka deflated on the spot, shoulders dropping all at once. They looked away, flicking the dangling charm of one earring. “What’s wrong with my shoes?” they said.

Both hunters looked down at the boots in question, suede and three inches down the length of the heel. “Nothing’s _wrong_ with them,” Gon said, blinking innocently. “But we’re going out of town. You should wear something you can walk in.”

“You underestimate me,” Hisoka said, glancing at Gon out the corner of their eye. “I can do more than walk in these. Would you like me to show you?”

“You don’t need to fight me over your shoes,” Gon said, evenly. “If you want to wear them then you should wear them. But we’re going to be hiking some and I would be a bad date if I made you go somewhere you weren’t dressed for.”

“Well,” Hisoka said. They smiled, abruptly shaking the prickly tension of the previous moment as if it had never existed. “If that’s all.”

While Hisoka changed shoes—it was a process; although they had only brought two other pairs with them to this city the choice was accorded the appropriate and necessary gravity—Gon leaned against the wall beside the closet, telling Hisoka about his errand of the previous two days with absolutely no concern for confidentiality. Hisoka certainly wasn’t going to halt the flow of information, although they were rather amused by the idea of Kurapika elsewhere in the world, helpless to stop the leak.

In flat boots, now, Hisoka followed Gon through the city.

“But what were you doing here?” Gon asked, as they waited for the train that would take them above the hubbub of the city and out to the edges of civilization. “If it’s boring to you, why come at all?”

To explain or not to explain? They could imagine how Gon would react. “I was looking for someone,” they said, “who isn’t here anymore.”

“Oh,” Gon said. “Why did _they_ come here?”

“They had business with a Mr. Miki,” Hisoka replied. “The carnival cruise magnate. He lives here, you see.”

Miki was also the owner of the most formidable gem ever collected, if sources were to be credited. Considering Chrollo’s hasty departure, perhaps sources were not. Maybe Hisoka’s next move would be to track down the true owner of the Morbid Opal, and allow the prey to come to them. It was a thought, certainly.

“Huh,” Gon said. “He lives pretty far from the ocean.”

Swamp City sprouted around them from its river of pavement, dipping down into ponds at the curve of every road which grew green with watergrass and moss. The sea lay some formidable miles to the east, although not so far that you couldn’t make the trip in a day. Hisoka glanced up at the monorail that ran between the trunks of highrises, more vital to the life of the city than any of the roads below. The problem wasn’t precisely that the place was boring. They were a patient person, usually more than willing to bide their time between goals with simple distractions. The trouble lay elsewhere.

In the distance, their train was slipping down its path towards them.

“Here,” Gon said. He opened his palm, extending calloused fingers towards Hisoka.

“What’s that?” Hisoka asked.

“My hand,” Gon said. He wiggled his fingers. “Would you like to hold it?”

Hisoka flexed their own fingers, regarding the stretch of skin and joints as if it were an unfamiliar newcomer to their anatomy. How exactly did one hold hands? When they had been fifteen they had seen a couple in the rain, under a single umbrella, their hands joined, and thought—Hisoka closed their fist abruptly, digging perfectly rounded nails deep into the flesh. Not deep enough to cut, but hard enough to bruise. None of the past now. The past was of no interest.

Carefully, they unclenched their fingers and extended the whole open thing to Gon. Let him do what he would with it. “If you like,” they said.

Gon reached up and entwined their fingers, gently pulling their joined hands down to swing between them. Gon grinned. “There,” he said. “Now it’s a real date.”

Hisoka found themself momentarily, honestly, at a loss for words. And just the slightest bit impressed at how smoothly Gon had accounted for their difference in height, standing at just the right distance before he had even asked. Hisoka was beginning to realize with some bemusement exactly how out of their depth they might be swimming—they couldn’t quite remember the last time they hadn’t been in complete control of a situation.

“You used to be so afraid of me,” Hisoka mused. “You and little Killua, so nervous.”

“I've seen some things since then,” Gon said. His fingers were warm and solid between Hisoka’s, shorter and thicker skinned. “To be honest, I’m still afraid of you.”

Hisoka lifted a brow. “You’re not supposed to admit that.”

“It’s true,” Gon said with a shrug.

Their train raced towards them, halting abruptly as it reached the station at the zenith of its arc. The handful of travelers around them reached for bags and briefcases against the wind of its arrival.

“And yet you’re here with me,” Hisoka said.

Gon looked up at them, his brown eyes glinting and lovely in the sunlight, and terribly serious. “I feel excited too,” he admitted, “when I see you. It’s not all bad, I don’t think.”

The train doors opened, and Gon pulled them steadily into the compartment where the city lay sprawled below, hands still twined together.

 

 

The journey of the day led them out into the country and deep into the woods, where the world was green and wild with the end of spring. Hisoka trailed a few steps behind Gon, matching the fall of his feet. Although they had certainly never let wilderness stop them, it was much nicer to walk along the path that Gon had scouted for them, where the terrain was unerringly just right for human travel.

Not to mention, Hisoka thought, the view was a nice… perk.

“Hisoka,” Gon said, “I can _feel_ you looking at my butt.”

“Mmm,” Hisoka purred, “where’s the harm in that?”

Gon sidestepped a patch of ground that was, on second look, perhaps a touch too thick with grass, and turned to offer Hisoka a guiding hand around the treacherous pitfall. Hisoka took it with pleasure, now, narrowing their eyes against the feel of Gon’s fingers, the soft scrape of calluses. They could certainly come to appreciate this luxury.

“It’s only a first date,” Gon said, reproachfully. And still, he didn’t seem particularly hasty to let Hisoka’s hand go.

“Surely I’m allowed to _look,_ ” Hisoka said, touching a finger to their lower lip. They paused, drawing back for a more comprehensive view. “And I _so_ like to.”

Their hands were still joined, suspended between them as Hisoka pouted dramatically. Gon seemed nonplussed by the whole thing.

“Well,” he said, “I guess you’re right. Aunt Mito never really said anything about looking.”

Gon led them up a hill that seemed to have grown up around the side of an ancient dark tree, towards a patch of light where Hisoka thought they could make out the edges of a cloth spread across the ground. Gon picked out a meandering path, pausing at one point on the ledge of a rocky outcropping to help Hisoka up—the whole thing they found deeply amusing. Never in their life had anyone thought it necessary to help them up a hill, not when they were young and certainly not now that they were a licensed hunter, champion of Heaven’s Arena, third strongest fighter to ever pass through the Phantom Troupe. No one had ever offered them any kind of help, really, except the kind that came with a price tag.

Of such little things, they thought, was Gon made.

As they came up the slope, following the pull of Gon’s hand, they leaned in close for the breath of a moment, while the two of them were eye to eye. They pressed a hand to Gon’s chest, feeling the solidity of the body beneath the jacket, and let it slip just a fraction lower. For a moment they were swallowed whole by the desire to touch skin, to claw back skin and feel still further, into the dark and secret territories of such a beautiful body. Their fingers twitched.

“Oops,” they said. “How clumsy. I lost my balance.”

Gon’s lip twitched and then broke into a lopsided smile. “No you didn’t,” he said.

“Of course I did,” Hisoka replied. “This is such a difficult terrain for a city person such as myself.”

They then took the next few feet in a flashstep so swift that Gon was still looking at the place where they had been standing while they coughed politely, waiting on a boulder at the top of the hill. Gon whirled.

“Well,” Hisoka said, “aren’t we going?”

At the summit someone had indeed spread out a blanket across the grass, so that a person seated on it could see down over the tops of the trees and into the ravine below. A thin ribbon of water ran over the rocks there, the banks rising green and wide from it. It was a rather nice view. Gon set down his bag and offered Hisoka a drink of something flavored with minerals and lemons, incidentally revealing a colorful floor of candy in the space underneath. Hisoka took the bottle and settled down onto the blanket.

“I don’t think we’ll have to wait long,” Gon said, more quietly than before. It was precisely the kind of gently secretive tone that Hisoka had never heard him employ on an actual secret.

“What are we waiting for?”

Gon looked up from the bottle that he was struggling to uncap—he had mistaken a screw-off for a pop top and didn’t seem to be catching on any time soon—and grinned. His expression had the warmth and knowing promise of uncovered embers, enflaming the very air around him. Hisoka watched hungrily, devouring the moment in which Gon’s attention was fixed entirely on them. It stretched on, Gon apparently unwilling or unable to look away—and then the entire glass lip of the bottle abruptly shattered and cracked off from the rest of it, spraying the grass with glittering shards and tiny flecks of red blood. Gon blinked down at it, his face turning as red as the splatter of blood.

“Here,” Hisoka said, offering their own drink, cap neatly removed. “You can have mine.”

“Ah, thanks,” Gon said, carefully setting his own aside. Blood glittered in the divots and lines of his palm, and Hisoka carefully pulled his hand toward themself for a better look.

“How pretty,” they murmured.

They bent their head, leaning into the reddened warmth of the palm, and pressed their lips to the deepest gash. The flavor of metal and salt burst across their tongue, a delicacy as powerful as any wine. So much more delicious, so much rarer. Hisoka sucked against the muscles, stiff with tension, and drew back. They spit a glittering sliver into the grass and returned to work, laving each miniscule gash and pinching skin between their teeth, spitting loose glass wherever they encountered it. They could hear the heaviness of Gon’s breaths, feel the twitch of muscles as they breathed hot air into the cup of the palm. Under their thumb, the intoxicating crescendo of a pulse rose.

They paused where the circle of his wrist began, tongue swiping lightly at that blue vein just beneath the surface. So vital, and so delicate. They moaned against the skin, breathy enough that it was nearly a sigh. There was so much strength stilled under that flesh, indeterminable crushing power.

“What bad luck,” Hisoka said, appreciatively. Their lips brushed fever-hot skin as they spoke.

“Not really,” Gon replied, a touch breathlessly.

“No?”

“The thing we’re here to see,” Gon said, “the smell of blood will probably just help.”

“Ah,” Hisoka said, peering up over the curve of the palm. “Then maybe I should cut you deeper?”

“No,” Gon said, as if this was a perfectly reasonable suggestion that he had given due consideration, “too much will just attract attention to us."

“Oh well,” Hisoka said, dropping the hand and turning their attention to the travel bag. “Perhaps another time.”

At the bottom of the bag, the layer of candy revealed a cherry sucker with a bright wrapper. Hisoka unwrapped it and popped it into their mouth, layering the sweetness of artificial fruit over the lingering copper of Gon’s blood. What a wine that would be, a flavor so deep that one might simply drown in it.

Presently, Gon made a muffled noise of excitement and laid a hand over Hisoka’s knee, gesturing for their attention. Hisoka followed the line of his pointing finger, down over the green heads of young trees and into the ravine, where a feline figure had stalked out across the mossy forest floor.

“There,” Gon said, in a voice so low it was nearly a whisper. “That’s a Dismal Panther.”

Hisoka sucked their candy, eyes narrowing. It was a gorgeous beast, several hands tall and the brindled gray of river rocks. It moved with a furtive purpose, each step full of killing potential.

“There should be another one,” Gon murmured, his sharp eyes scanning the distant brush. “I can smell him, out there in that direction.”

The other, when it at last deigned to appear, had a smaller and swifter look to it, but was unmistakably of the same breed.

“That one is only just an adult this year,” Gon explained, as the two cats prowled closer to one another. “The first one is at least a couple years older—this is his territory, but territory changes every year.”

Hisoka watched, stare unbroken, as the creatures spotted each other. There was a sharpness in the very air, like the twinge of a plucked string. Hisoka had not had all that much to do with animals, and found the unfolding scene as curious as it was exotic. The larger cat sank into the grass, rolling its shoulders, and sprang all at once. The smaller cat went side over side under the assault, tumbling down the slope of the ravine, down into the shallow water—it rallied and lunged, all teeth and massive crushing paws, sleek fur rippling over the bunch and coil of haunches.

The collision was brutal, seemingly endless, and hypnotic.

“If the older one wins,” Gon said, “he’ll kill the younger one. Cats are like that. When the older ones lose, though, they usually live—I don’t know why, but it’s almost always that way. I think it’s because they know that the loser will go on to challenge the next territory over.”

“Do you think so?” Hisoka said, absently.

“I guess it could be that they respect the one who carved out the territory to start with,” Gon replied, thoughtfully. “Some people think that cats don’t understand that sort of thing, but they do. They’re very big on respect.”

Below them the smaller beast landed a blow like a splitting slap across the muzzle of its opponent, who lay pinned and desperately struggling beneath it. There was a monstrous sound, ringingly loud and terrible, as the smaller one plunged its teeth into the neck of the larger. Hisoka had all but written it off as a foregone battle when the beasts rolled and lunged in anew, more furious than ever.

When the small cat lay at last heaving and bloodied on the bank, its throat torn to a pulped mess, Hisoka let out a breath they didn’t quite remember holding. They realized belatedly that they had been holding their candy to their lips for some minutes now, paused in the middle of eating.

“Ah,” they said, “that one is dead soon enough.”

“Yeah,” Gon said, “that’s almost definitely fatal. I guess he was too young after all.”

Hisoka could almost smell the blood from this distance, the memory as real as the false sweetness of candy against their teeth. How lovely, how briefly and completely perfect. No reservations, no mercy. The dying creature had a ferocious grace all of its own, even now.

“They’re so cool to see in action,” Gon said. Hisoka watched the young man’s profile, dappled with shadow from the trees above them, as he leaned forward for a better view. “They fight like this every spring, like clockwork. The instinct is so powerful. I wonder if they ever think about what they’re doing.”

“Do cats think?” asked Hisoka, who would be the first to admit knowing little to nothing about animals.

Gon frowned. “Ummm,” he said, “yeah, but not in the way humans do. They mostly just— _know_. Or don’t know. Or want. I’m not sure that they can know _why_ they’re doing something. They fight this time of year because in another couple weeks they’re going to mate, but I don’t know that _they_ know that.”

“Hmmm.” Hisoka eyed their companion. “If it was later in the month, would you have taken me to see them mate?”

Gon screwed up his nose in thought—it was obscenely cute. “Uh,” he said, “well, probably not? Aunt Mito says that most people are kind of squeamish about that, especially girls. Why, would you want to go?”

Hisoka leaned back into the bed of leaves beneath the blanket, sucking on their lollypop. “Of course,” they said. “Sex is nearly as interesting as death.”

“Is death that interesting?” Gon asked, turning his head at last to look at Hisoka. His expression was curious, light, somehow both absent and intent. As if he was simply allowing the world to pour itself into him.

“Death is the greatest intimacy,” Hisoka said, regarding their candy with a single-minded focus. “There’s nothing more wasteful than dying alone, unable to share that final pleasure. To die, to kill—” they looked up, fixing their potent gaze on Gon. “—to know someone in that way. Love is such a valuable thing.”

“Oh,” Gon said. For a long time he said nothing else, contemplating patterns of shadow as wind shook the leaves of the branches above them.

“Isn’t that why you brought me here?” Hisoka asked.

Gon pursed his lips. “In a way,” he said. “When you take someone out, you’re supposed to show them something beautiful. You’re supposed to share something with them that they can remember when they remember you. I thought you would like to see the fight.” A smile broke across his features. “I guess I got it right!”

Hisoka crunched the last of their candy and tossed the stick away with a careless flick. “Come here,” they said, extending a hand.

Gon gave them a wary look.

“Tsk,” Hisoka said, “I can play by the rules. It’s only a first date after all.”

Hesitant, Gon crawled closer and allowed Hisoka to take him by the hand, drawing him to sit kneeling at Hisoka’s hip. The older hunter lifted their left hand to the jut of Gon’s chin, sliding one finger beneath it to support the vulnerable flesh there.

“When I first met you,” Hisoka said, dreamily, “I thought it would be a lovely thing to break you myself. Mmm, but now. Now I think it would be far better to die by your hand.” Hisoka trailed their nail down the column of throat, to press the hollow of the collar bones. “What an exquisite pleasure, to share that moment with you.”

Gon watched them, thrumming with readiness to fight at the first sign of changing intention. At last, there was the fear that Hisoka had grown accustomed to.

“Of course,” they added, “I will certainly still kill you, if you aren’t strong enough.”

Gently, Hisoka slid both hands through the sleek hair at Gon’s temples, burying them there. Fear, and still. More than fear. Hisoka dug their nails into Gon’s scalp, shuddering slightly at the way that Gon rose up underneath the pressure, squared and unflinching and dauntless, poised to strike back.

“Do not disappoint me, Gon,” they whispered.

 

 

Gon bid them farewell that evening, at the same air harbor where they had first encountered each other. The night had carried them through a street dinner and ended in the lounge of the concourse, where Hisoka’s ship was arranged to load in ten minutes. Gon was due to travel elsewhere in the morning, and nothing of interest remained in Swamp City to hold their attention. Better to leave while the place remained alive with the presence of Gon than to remain in his absence.

The flowers were too delicate to travel. The petals were already growing brown and bruised against their lace captivity, but Hisoka had packed it anyway, and could not have said why. They were not usually one for mementos, given to travel light since before they could remember picking up the habit. It seemed strange to make an exception for a thing that was never meant to last the day. Still, regardless, Hisoka found its presence preferable. They were peeling petals from one tightly closed bud in the lounge of the air harbor while Gon placed an order for his own flight in the morning.

“I’m lucky my birthday was this month,” Gon remarked, while the attendant was fussing with some business at another counter. “This country doesn’t sell airship tickets to anyone under seventeen.”

“You could simply use your hunter’s license,” Hisoka pointed out, smearing a petal between two fingers. "Since you've wrestled it back from the abyss of lost things."

“Ah!” Gon said. “I forgot.” He tapped the counter rapidly, staring off into space for a moment, before returning his attention to Hisoka. “When’s your birthday?”

“Mine?” Hisoka said, lifting their brows. “That’s private information. Imagine if that sort of thing got around.”

“Oh. I guess you’re right,” Gon said. His expression dropped, and then almost immediately revived. “But I’ll give you a good reason! Tell me when your birthday is and I’ll come spend it with you.”

Hisoka blinked. “You think highly of yourself,” they murmured, “don’t you?”

“But you would like me to spend it with you, wouldn’t you?” Gon persevered, unfazed.

Hisoka considered it. Their birthday was hardly more than a statistic, a piece of information that had clung tenaciously to memory when most other things had been summarily left behind. Useful at times to know, but hardly of any personal, _real_ value. They had certainly never celebrated it. If they were to tell Gon, that would be perhaps two people in the entire world who knew now. If they succeeded in catching Chrollo and killed him, it would be one.

Hisoka imagined, too, another day like today—endless days like today, a drip of wine from an opaque bottle.

They beckoned their date over, this time meeting little resistance. Gon stepped closer, inclining just a fraction of an angle towards Hisoka, who bent down, lips to the shell of Gon’s ear, and answered, “June sixth.”

“That’s so soon!” Gon said, drawing back.

“Well?” Hisoka replied, “Are you going to keep your promise?”

“Of course,” Gon dismissed. “Where do you want to go? It’s your birthday, after all.”

Where indeed? Hisoka turned over Gon’s words from before, examining the potential in their meaning. A date was something to share, a beautiful thing. What would be worthy of sharing with Gon, who loved everything and wanted nothing? What could they show him that no one else could? Hisoka flicked through their rusty memory, searching out moments of pleasure preserved between the files. Perhaps there _was_ something.

Hisoka plucked a pen from the counter and opened their hand to reveal Gon’s ticket, as if it had always been there. While Gon was furiously patting himself down, Hisoka flipped the paper over and scrawled a date above the name of a city.

“Meet me here,” they said, offering the ticket to its bewildered owner. “We can take the trip together.”

Gon smiled so sincerely that it was impossible to think he was anything but genuinely excited at the prospect of spending unspecified amounts of time in Hisoka’s presence. The ticket was carefully folded away as Hisoka watched, bemused and uncertain for the second time in a single day.

This was a game, they had begun to realize, that they did not know the rules to.


	3. Distilled to Moonshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past is a boring country to visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IRL seventeen is way too young to be dating a thirty year old so do not look to my fanfiction as a role model cool thanks. In fact, none of Gon's romantic background should be imitated. You'll see what I mean.
> 
> EDIT: so the spin off manga was pretty interesting right? I'm kind of freaked out at how close I came to predicting certain things. Minor details have been altered to make this fic compatible with the manga.

You had to travel on foot.

All of the Mafioso types came in small caravans of shining black vans, sending up a storm of dust behind them like a warning signal, but they were only ever tolerated and never truly welcomed. Outsiders were never welcomed, really; but the cool acceptance for a traveler who took the last leg of the road alone was preferable to the smiling condescension you would get otherwise. The types who took their dark vans into the desert couldn’t tell condescension from helpfulness either way, but Hisoka certainly could. In any case, they’d got history here. It would be useless to act like a stranger now.

Hisoka told Gon most but not all of this, as the jeep that had carried them this far disappeared in a plume of dust.

It was June sixth, hot and bright as the afternoon wound down, but it went unspoken that they would be out here together the next day as well, for the return trip. If Gon considered the extra day allotted for travel cheating, he hadn’t protested it yet. All around them the sand had the faintest hint of green, growing more vibrant as it stretched off into the distance. Gon had taken up a handful of it as soon as he stepped off the car and let it crumble through his fingers, lifting the powdery remains to his tongue.

“Greensand,” he had said, looking up. “You should be able to grow pines here, at least. But it’s all desert…”

“There was a war here,” Hisoka replied. “They say the grass never came back.”

They had met up as arranged at the edge of a sleepy mid-sized city, where the inns and hotels outnumbered the offices, and the locals gave them quick appraising glances before moving on with their private errands. It was a deliberately quiet town, where many things were not said and would never be explained. Gon had seemed garishly out of place there, with his bright chatter and endless curiosity. Hisoka had amused themself for a while just watching the tight lipped locals stutter under the concussive force of Gon's very existence.

With the car gone, the trek through the wasteland took hours. Hisoka was unsurprised to find that Gon had a marginally easier time of it, although they maintained a cool enough façade that they doubted Gon realized this. He was an outdoorsy type, whereas Hisoka much preferred to limit their games to the sheltered landscape of cities wherever possible. When at last the glittering mounds of Meteor City rose above the horizon, they let out a soft sigh of relief.

Gon whistled. "It's like a mountain range," he said, peering into the distance. "I've never been anywhere like here before."

"Are you worried?" Hisoka asked.

"No. Why should I be?"

"Well, you _have_ had bad relations with the Phantom Troupe in the past, whose members largely come from here. The denizens of Meteor City are fiercely protective of one another."

"Ah," Gon said, "but I'm with you!"

Hisoka adjusted the veil of their headscarf as the wind picked up around them. "You mean that because I was once a member as well, I should be able to vouch for you?"

Gon hummed, tapping his chin thoughtfully, "Maybe that too? But I was thinking that you wouldn't take me somewhere you didn't think I could handle."

"I'm a fan of sink or swim testing," Hisoka countered lightly.

"And anyways," Gon went on, ignoring them, "I didn't really do anything bad to any of those guys in the end. I don't see what they could hold against me."

"No," Hisoka said, "I suppose you wouldn't."

Although the skyline of the landfill sprawled into unseeable distance, Hisoka knew of only one entrance to the city that wouldn't result in a rude reception for unannounced visitors. They led the way to a heap like a foothill, where wind-bitten girders formed an imperfect arch high above human heads. It towered, sending up a spray of crows like shot fired from a gun, as the two of them approached. Hisoka rummaged in the detritus for a moment before locating an aged refrigerator door, its handle worn down to coppery smoothness by countless human hands.

"Here we are," they said, turning back to Gon. "I'll warn you only once: don't say anything about the Phantom Troupe while you're here. If you start a fight I'll have to kill everyone and the evening will be entirely spoiled."

"Everyone?" Gon echoed.

"Naturally. I did say they were fiercely protective here, didn't I?"

"Could you do that?"

Hisoka took hold of the handle and wrenched the door open with a deafening creak, shattering a cake of dirt and rust from the edges. "I could certainly try," they replied.

Beyond the door was a darkness that would have been impenetrable during daylight hours, but with the sun sinking low and gray in the sky behind them it was only formidably dim. A gentle slope of steps led, lit by a series of lamps the brightness and shade of glow worms, down into true darkness. Gon trailed a step behind, marveling at everything from the stone of the walls to the faded, ancient graffiti.

"It's like a tomb," he said, spinning on his heels, "like one of those places my old man works on."

"It's at least two hundred years old," Hisoka said. Their normally only dull interest in the details of history seemed to shine up in the presence of Gon's enthusiasm, prompting a store of knowledge they hadn't realized they had retained. "This is the entrance for those who live in the city but aren't native to it, first generation immigrants and merchants and the like. It doesn't seem to have been opened in a long time, though. Perhaps things have changed."

"When did you live here?" Gon asked.

Hisoka's eyes flickered down towards their companion. "Who says I lived here?"

"If you didn't, why would you use this door? But it must have been a long time ago, or you would know why it's rusted shut. And you weren't born here or you'd go another way."

Instead of answering, Hisoka spent a minute carefully unpinning their scarf and veil, winding the loose cloth around their neck where usually a collar would have been. They had dressed in pale green for the occasion, to give the illusion that they had been unaffected by the long trek across the wasteland.

At the bottom of the stairs the darkness opened up into a long concrete room, its high ceiling glittering with bits of beautifully colored glass and curiously shaped metal, like a field of strange stars. There was a woman waiting in front of the exit, unarmed, whose sunken eyes flashed with recognition when she settled her gaze on Hisoka. Hisoka narrowed their eyes in return.

"The magician," she said. "And a guest? Who are you, child?"

Gon bounded across the room and came to a halt in front of her, extending his hand. "Gon Freecs," he said. "I'm a friend. We're celebrating their birthday today."

The woman took his hand but continued looking over his shoulder at Hisoka, who made no effort to hide the aggressive energy oozing out of them. "Ah," she said. "How interesting. Will you be staying the night?"

"If that's okay?"

The woman returned her attention to the young man, and after a brief span of thoughtful silence, she smiled the ghost of a smile. "That won't be any trouble," she said. "One night, then. Do your best to keep him in line, eh?"

"Them _,_ ma'am," Gon corrected, smiling back. "I don't really think I can do that, but I'll give it a shot."

The woman turned, taking hold of the heavy curtain that ran along the wall behind her, and pulled it back to reveal a doorless entrance, through which sound and light suddenly poured. It was as if a wave of sensation had crashed over them all at once, an ocean thick with shouts and the sharp peals of metal like grains of sand loose in the water. As Hisoka followed Gon towards the other side, they paused for a moment, shoulder to shoulder with the old woman.

"You've grown," she observed. "But then, everyone does, I suppose."

"You seem the same as ever," they remarked.

Up ahead, Gon was shouting and gesturing for Hisoka to catch up, pointing furiously at something beyond what Hisoka could see. Past that doorway was a cavern that Hisoka knew extended for several city blocks, its roof fused from a jumble of ancient garbage. Further still there would be the surface, with its roads hidden in the winding edges of mountainous scrap heaps, each pressing down onto the chambers of hidden homes, some meager and some grand as sepulchers. The clarity of knowledge was unpleasant, sudden. It was as if they had never left.

"Pardon me," they said, fixing their gaze on the boy waving to them. "I appear to be needed elsewhere."

Gon raced towards them as they ducked out beneath the ancient lintel, his boots slapping pavement like a hyperactive drumbeat. "This place is amazing," he said, taking Hisoka by both hands. "I've never seen anything like it! There's all these workshops, and these tents, and I think I saw a food stall over that way which reminds me, I haven't eaten in  _ages_ , do you think they take jenny?" 

"They take jenny," Hisoka replied. In the dim distance they could just make out the looming scrap and cloth outline of the Magdalene, its ancient sides a patchwork of materials from era before era. It seemed larger than they remembered, counterintuitively.

"That lady," Gon said, frowning suddenly. "She never introduced herself."

"She's the watcher woman," Hisoka said, "a powerful nen user. If she has a name, no one remembers it now."

"Can people just not have names?" Gon asked, looking up.

"In Meteor City," Hisoka replied, "there seems to be a shortage."

Hisoka occupied themself for a while simply watching Gon, who was curious about everything and could hardly stop interrogating the kabob vendor long enough to place an order. The bazar seemed louder than it really was, echoes reverberating off of the distant cavern walls and the long stone floor to build a kind of rumbling white noise around them. The winding patches of unoccupied stone that passed for streets were even then shifting their shape, as a craftsman folded up his tent and packed away his wares for the day. Across the way a pair of young twins were laying out the produce of a moon garden, gourds and peppers in ghostly hues, and somewhere behind them there was the shrill sound of haggling in another language.

Gon bounded back to them eventually, a veritable bouquet of kabob sticks wedged between his fingers. "I got some for you too," he said, offering the whole assortment. "I don't know what you like, really, so I got a lot of meat. You have..." he looked Hisoka up and down, "...a lot of muscle to maintain."

Was that a compliment of some kind? Hisoka plucked one of the sticks from Gon's grip and bit into it. He was right, of course. It was one of the persistent grey linings of striving for strength.

"You seem to have made a friend," Hisoka observed, glancing at the vendor. "Is that a new record?"

"Danzi?" Gon asked, following Hisoka's gaze. "Oh, he's nice! You know that business has been in his family for three generations? Of course his parents wanted him to go into the mafia, but it turned out alright for him in the end." 

"Record time indeed," Hisoka murmured, and promptly demolished their meal. "Come this way," they said, gesturing at the narrow length of a crossing street. "I have to make an inquiry."

The Magdalene wouldn’t have been too far of a walk away if the cavern had been clear of crowds, but as it stood the path was meandering and labyrinthine, leaving ample time for Gon to take in the sights and sounds as they made their way along.  As they passed the tent of a fortune teller (“palme readings” read the sign, “charms + luck”) Gon licked his fingers clean—distracting, certainly a spectacle worth observing—and took hold of Hisoka’s hand. It was warm and slightly slick with spit, and filled Hisoka with all sorts of delicious, wicked thoughts.

Hisoka made a noise of interest and curiosity.

“This is a date too, isn’t it?” Gon replied. “A second date?”

Hisoka eyed Gon’s earnest expression and lifted their brows in response. Gon knew, of course, that Hisoka was unusually fond of him. That was well established. Hisoka had the glimmer of a suspicion that they were being manipulated somehow, although to what end they could hardly have said.

Seventeen, and still as blasé and overconfident as he had been as a child. If Hisoka had ever mistaken his temperament for naiveté, they had certainly been off the mark.

“If you like,” they answered.

At the curtained entrance to the Magdalene, Hisoka took a sharp right turn and circled the sprawling skirts of the structure, approaching the smaller tents that sprang up around the edges like spider’s legs. There was a novitiate sweeping outside the senior boys dormitories, her downturned face hidden by the white veil of her habit.

“Excuse me sister,” Hisoka said, politely but suddenly enough that the woman jumped, clutching her broom.

“Oh,” she said, “ah, hello there, strangers. Can I render you some assistance?”

“Just an answer,” Hisoka said. “Is Ravanhatta playing tonight?”

“She plays every night,” the novitiate said, in a tone that implied not knowing this fact put one significantly behind the curve. “I imagine she’s tuning up as we speak.”

“Much obliged,” Hisoka said. They tugged Gon’s hand, still in theirs. “Come on then, we’ll go inside.”

“Stranger,” the novitiate called after them, “I’m sorry, but, do we know you?”

Beside them, Gon was scanning the area for other people, brows furrowed. “We?” he asked.

“She means,” Hisoka clarified, “have I been to the bazar before.”

“Are you one of Crack Shiza’s people?” she went on, visibly running through some mental filefolder of faces. “Telomaru’s?”

“I’m not one of anyone’s people,” Hisoka replied, losing interest in the conversation entirely. They turned away, Gon stumbling at the suddenness in their wake, and made their way towards the curtained entrance of the crypt. Gon got his feet back under him with little trouble and immediately turned his attention to the ancient cloth walls, up the sides to the towering supports which distended the fabric like bones beneath a corpse’s skin. Hisoka had always found it rather morbid—this nearly immortal thing hunched beneath the earth, swallowing up the lost children of a continent. Quite pretty.

“Is it a market too?” Gon asked, craning his neck back to see more.

“It’s a kind of church,” Hisoka answered, “a crypt. I suppose you could call it a market in a sense. They always seem to be trying to sell you something.”

“It looks like it’s been patched up a lot,” Gon noted, thoughtfully.

"The Crypt of the Magdalene is the oldest structure in the cavern,” Hisoka said. “They say that before the mound was hollowed out, everyone conducted their businesses on the surface, at night between the trash heaps.”

They pushed back the curtain and let go of Gon’s hand, gesturing for the young hunter to enter first. Inside, the darkness was spotted with endless flickering candles, strung up and down the support beams and the rafters, hung over the banister of the overlooking second story. In front of the great wooden panels of the altar, a crone was seated in a pool of dark robes and blankets, tuning an instrument. All around her, in a wide circle, people had seated themselves on the ground in varying levels of comfort. Some sat in groups, in dark suits, with ladies at their hips. Some sat alone, working on small tasks with their hands while they waited.

“Here,” Hisoka said, pointing to a space on the other side of a towering support pillar, “this will do.”

They snagged a heavy pillow as they passed, making direct and friendly eye contact with the man who seemed to be about to protest. He quickly averted his gaze. Satisfied, Hisoka dropped their prize to the floor and went about settling themself in, catching Gon by one wrist and pulling him down to land between their legs.

“Mm,” they said, “a perfect fit.”

It took Gon a moment to be sure that there wasn’t going to be a fight after all. When at last he managed to relax, he turned his head to give Hisoka a doubtful look.

“That wasn’t fair,” he said. “I almost hit you.”

“Oh, I wish you would,” Hisoka purred. Gon’s face was doubly handsome when it screwed up in annoyance.

Gon gave him a look that was equal parts exasperation and disapproval. Something to do with date etiquette, Hisoka would imagine, but preferred not to ask. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Gon’s back was warm and solid against their chest, his shoulder blades shifting tangibly as he hooked his arms over his bent knees. Not as small as he once was, but certainly still small compared to Hisoka—like a delicate creature in a cage, pinned at the mercy of his captor. Hisoka trailed a hand over his shoulder, watching the ripple of shivers that spread under their touch.

Hisoka was struck all at once by Gon's equal confidence and vulnerability. When was the last time someone had willingly trusted Hisoka? No, more accurate: when was the last time Hisoka had allowed anyone to trust them? 

Beneath the wooden altar, Ravanhatta pulled her bow across the string of her instrument with a single, haunting peal. The very air seemed to hum around them, yearning to harmonize with the unearthly sound. Gon sat forward, back straight.

“What’s she playing?” he asked, in the same quiet tone he had used for the depths of the forest.

“The ravanhatta.”

“But isn’t _her_ name Ravanhatta?”

Hisoka leaned back against the pillar, lowering their lids against the darkness. “She takes her name from the instrument,” they said, “she came into this world with nothing but that instrument, and walked across the desert with it on her back. She’s the only master left alive.”

The beginning of a dirge, seething across the floor of the crypt, and then dying into the discordant sounds of tuning. The bells on her bow clanged to no particular rhythm.

Ravanhatta was world-famous, Hisoka explained, among those in the know. In her old age she refused to play anywhere save the Crypt of the Magdalene, but the visitors still asked for her, night after night, and so the denizens of Meteor City had simply laid out pillows along the floor of the chapel, with a pragmatism that characterized their kind. Commerce mustn’t stop for anyone. Mafia men who came to scout for soldiers and rich women who came to gamble, beyond the borders of the world’s police control, often refused to go home until they had heard the old woman play. Things like that had a tendency to become a mark of affluence.

Hisoka slid their hands over Gon’s belly as the tuning metamorphosed into melody, flat palms pressing into warm muscle. Gon hardly seemed to notice, intent on the rising performance, tensed into perfect stillness.

The bells of the bow clanged, all at once, and then became an unsteady, winding beat. The sound of the song came up as if through the floor itself, stretching and lunging. Hisoka’s eyes fluttered closed as they imagined the music like a kind of animal, perhaps a prowling cat, circling the gathered multitude.

“The ravanhatta is the world’s most difficult instrument,” Hisoka murmured, arching just slightly against Gon’s back as the melody swelled. “When she dies, she’ll take a rare talent with her.”

The tune she played was something dark with age, as gauzy as the purple veils that hung from the lintel of the far wall, glittering with specks of woven gold in the firelight. Her whole body rocked with the force of her bowing, the strings sang, the crowd drew a collective breath as the melody swooped and dove between them. Hisoka had seen her play for the first time when they were barely into their teens, and had been spellbound. It had been in a street that night, glittering with pennies, before the woman cloistered herself once and for all in the crypt.

When the song wound down some immeasurable length of time later, Hisoka drew Gon back against themself, and felt the sigh of longing underneath their spread fingers.

"She'll take a break to meditate between performances," they said. "You like it, then?"

"Definitely," Gon replied. "It's amazing how when the music sweeps up, like this," he mimed the curve of a roller coaster, "it takes your whole body with it."

"I thought it might affect you," Hisoka said. Their fingers mapped and memorized the subtle panes of Gon's chest, each slow movement transmitting more delightful information.

"It affects you too?"

"Mmmm," Hisoka purred, "ever since the first time, the same way. But it's been a long time. I had almost begun to forget."

"How long?" Gon asked, shifting around to look at Hisoka. He rested an arm on Hisoka's knee.

"Ah," said Hisoka, "but that would be telling."

It was absolutely an arbitrary line to draw, but worth it to see the look of keen frustration on Gon's face when they lifted a secretive finger to their lips.

As the strings of the ravanhatta began to sing again, Gon paused, his eyes fluttering shut, and then he opened them again with a strength of purpose that Hisoka had not expected. He shifted the rest of the way around, still bracketed between powerful thighs, and took the older hunter's jaw in both hands.

"I'm going to kiss you," he said, as certain as the nightfall, "I don't think you'll mind, but stop me if you do."

Hisoka licked their lips. "Oh really?" they said.

Gon nodded, the movement slight. "The music makes me want to do something dangerous," he admitted, his eyes fixed on Hisoka's mouth. 

"I'm flattered," Hisoka murmured.

Gon surged up, reckless all at once and determined, and bit a kiss onto Hisoka's lips. More aggressive than Hisoka expected, and more confident—they moaned softly into it, pulling Gon deeper into them. He drew back and pressed forward again, leaving kisses like the surge of a tidal storm against Hisoka's parted mouth, his palms burning hot where he cupped skin. Hisoka trailed their wicked nails up the length of his spine, between the shoulder blades, over the knot of vertebra, and rested the pointed tip of their thumb above his windpipe. Just a flicker of pressure, right here against the flesh-

"Hahh," Gon panted, his whole body tense and thrumming under Hisoka's hand.

"Now, if I were to press down," Hisoka said, drawing back just a bit, "theoretically you could stop me with Ryu. Then your spine would be exposed, of course, and I could most likely rip it out of you with very little trouble. What would you do then, hmm?"

"I wouldn't use Ryu at all," Gon said, his fingers still laid along the curve of Hisoka's jaw. "I would crush you—here—while your strength was focused in your hands."

Hisoka smiled, widely and darkly. "Do you think you could?"

Gon returned the smile with a pointed look, his brows rising just a shade higher. "I could certainly try," he said, mimicking Hisoka’s words from earlier that evening.

Hisoka regarded him with a shiver of pleasure. Perched between their thighs, Gon sat imperious and certain, his eyes yellowed by candle light. There was something about the set of his shoulders, the arch of his back, that dared anyone to try him. He tipped his chin up as if to say, _this is not the vulnerability you think it is_.

 _"Oh,"_ Hisoka said, brushing a hand through strands of jet black hair, "I really do _love_ that look."

The bow of the ravanhatta was humming low and promising, the stalk before the kill, binding up notes in its path that could turn the bones into yearning chambers. Hisoka smirked, leaned back, and pressed down their nail just deep enough to draw a single bead of blood.

"Come then," they said, "have your way with me."

 

 

Some time after the player had disappeared into the shadows of the crypt and the crowd had begun to disperse, Gon broke apart from their embrace and frowned, like a swimmer surfacing in unfamiliar waters.

“I’m still hungry,” he said, eyeing his own abdomen as if it had betrayed him. “Let’s go get something in the market.”

Hisoka glanced at one of the sisters, snuffing candles along the far wall of the crypt. They had been interested to see if the two of them would be kicked out by force, if they stayed a bit longer. The sisters were always so boring. They would have liked to see the look on a novitiate’s face at the sight of Gon, lost in one of his ravaging kisses, panting and pressing and inescapable. Hisoka would have been more than happy to let anyone watch. They did so like to put on a performance.

Not least, they thought, under Gon’s attention.

“Well then,” they said, almost effortlessly lifting Gon off his knees as they stood, and settling him onto his feet. “Let’s see if there’s anything interesting in the city at this time of night.”

As they left, one or two of the sisters gave them brief, searching glances. Of course in Meteor City it wasn’t any particular problem for outsiders to kiss in the chapel, but a native would know better. Hisoka suspected that these, too, were trying to place a face with a memory.

In the bazar, most of the stall holders who remained were craftspeople working late on assignments, probably intending to finish before certain visitors left in the morning. People were always coming and going, in surprising numbers for the best kept secret of the world, and taking their purchases with them. No few times had Hisoka observed a curio for sale in a York Shin window that had certainly originated here, underneath the earth.

Eventually Gon managed to locate a restaurant still open, its cookfires set into the floor just a little ways from the substantial bulk of the hotel. While the inn was built mostly of wood, the restaurant was only cloth, and the seating nonexistent—the two hunters retrieved their orders from the one and settled in against the other, leaning against the broad sturdy walls of the hotel to watch the people come and go.

A long way above them, one skylight had been rolled back to reveal a clear midnight. Compared to the jumbled fusion of the cavern roof, it seemed as smooth as silk.

Gon gulped down an overambitious helping of noodles and remarked, “You’re a surprisingly good kisser for someone who’s never dated before.”

Hisoka felt, for one brief moment, an unfamiliar emotion that could possibly have been classified as “mortification”. They stared at Gon.

“Who taught you?” Gon asked, as if he were asking what dojo a fellow fighter had trained under.

Hisoka frowned. “My master,” they replied, shortly.

“Oh,” Gon said. He took the hint and went on, “Keta-san taught me—that was on our second date, like this is with you. She said she came back to Whale Island just for me.”

“And Keta was?”

“Thirty six, I think,” Gon said, looking thoughtfully at the sky. “Oh! But I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Pretend I said twenty-nine.”

“How many second dates have you had?” Hisoka asked, narrowing their eyes.

Gon squinted, physically counting on his fingers. “Not counting Aunt Mito? Um. Four, I think. There was Keta-san and Ichiko-san—she wanted to go all the way but you can’t do that until the third date—and the lady from Kalga, but that was a long time ago and I don’t remember it so well, and then Maria-san, we went out a few times before she left town.”

Hisoka blinked down at the younger hunter.  They remembered, belatedly, that they had thought it was odd when Gon casually offered to trade them a date for a favor. At least now it made sense. Before they could voice the observation, they noticed a woman approaching from the street and immediately set the conversation aside.

“Hello boys,” she said, offering them a charming smile. “You’re out awfully late for newcomers.”

Hisoka glanced up and down her figure, cataloguing the familiar combination of skirt and heels, and relaxed.

“Yes,” they said, “we are.”

“Would you boys be interested in a meal to split?” she said, giving Gon a particularly knowing wink. “Last call for closing time, get it while it’s hot.”

“We already got dinner,” Gon said, tipping his bowl so that the woman could see its contents. “Thank you though.”

She glanced from the bowl to Gon’s smiling face and back down again. “Oh,” she said. “Um. Yes, I can see that.”

“She means,” Hisoka said, “would we like to sleep with her.”

Gon looked up at his date, startled. “What,” he said, “both of us?”

“I assume,” Hisoka replied. They glanced at the woman for confirmation and found her still focused on the steaming bowl in Gon’s hands.

“Hm?” she said, and then, “Oh! Yes. For the appropriate price, of course.”

Hisoka looked to Gon, silently turning over the reins of the conversation. Gon, for his part, only shook his head. “No thank you,” he said. He gestured aside at Hisoka, smiling again. “I’m actually out on a date with them. You can have some of this if you want, though.”

“...What?” the woman said.

Gon held out his bowl. “The noodles. You’re looking at them pretty hard. It’s okay, I already ate once tonight.”

The woman turned red, scratching at the back of one ankle with the tip of her toe. “Er,” she said, “if you’re sure you don’t mind? I’ve been too busy to order anything all shift.”

“No problem!”

Hesitantly, she took the bowl from Gon’s hands and sat down on the ground beside him, flipping out her skirt to avoid catching too much dust.

“Thanks,” she said, “it’s been a long night.”

“Really?”

The woman nodded, her face already half buried in the bowl. She swallowed, wiped her mouth, and explained, “I’ve been stuck babysitting a couple of real power trippers since they came into town. Honestly, escort work is hardly even worth it—you’ve got to smile through the most obnoxious jokes. And then they wanna feel you up all the time, so their cronies can see it.”

“Oh,” Gon said, “I knew a lady like that. Her sister was in the tour group and she wanted to make a point, I think.”

“Yeah?” the woman said. “You in the business too?”

“I’m a hunter,” Gon said, “for a while now.”

The woman gave him a sharp look over the rim of the bowl she was still slurping from. “Mmph,” she said. “You seem alright, kid, and I’m not one to judge, but you’d be better off not telling anyone else here you do that kind of work.”

“Why?”

She shrugged vaguely, setting the food down. “It makes people kinda nervous. Hunters come through here from time to time chasing bounties, and they tear the place up. Not to mention our boys on the outside, who’s killing them half the time.”

“Oh,” Gon said. “I can see why you might not like hunters, then.”

She handed him back the bowl, mostly empty, and stood. “You’re sweet,” she pronounced, stretching her hands up over her head. “If you’re in town tomorrow and you wanna take me up on that offer, I’ll give you a good go. Both of you,” she added, shooting Hisoka an interested glance. “Enjoy your date.”

It was quiet for a moment, in the lee of the hotel.

“You’re going to be hungry for the rest of the night,” Hisoka pointed out.

Gon looked down at the remains of his meal. “Ohhh,” he said, “you’re _right_.” He sighed and leaned his head back against the wall, with a hollow thud. “But it was worth it. She needed the pick-me-up.”

“You really are kind to everyone,” Hisoka mused, as they watched the woman’s figure disappear into the winding streets. “Aren’t you?”

“Sure, unless they’ve done something despicable,” Gon said. He paused, and the added conscientiously, “even then, sometimes, if they need it. I'm working on that, though.”

Hisoka offered their own bowl wordlessly, enjoying the warmth of the radiant smile they received in return. Gon’s pleasure was much more gratifying than street food. In any case, they had been hungry for quite a lot of their life and long ago learned how to dismiss it from mind.

“I don’t believe I have ever met a creature quite like you,” they said.

 _And when he dies_ , they thought, with an unusual pang of restlessness, _he’ll take a rare talent with him_.

In the mean time, while Gon made his way through his second helping, Hisoka drew the pack of cards from their pocket for something to do and spent a while showing Gon card tricks that he hadn't seen before. It was restful.

At the reception of the hotel, dim but clean, the manager asked Hisoka whether they would prefer one bed or two, and Hisoka replied two. As they made their way up the stairs, they could feel Gon’s curious eyes on them.

“What is it?” they said.

“How come you told them two beds?” Gon asked. “I’m used to sharing a bed with Killua when we travel together, and it’s much cheaper.”

“You don’t intend to have sex with me, do you?”

“On a second date?” Gon said, features schooled into prudish disapproval. “No.”

“Well then I would prefer to have my own bed,” Hisoka said. They contemplated for a moment whether it would be worth it to explain, and then continued, “I have a tendency to wake violent when unfamiliar bodies are near me.”

“Don’t you like violence?”

Hisoka pursed their lips, locating the door to their room in silence, and then replied only, “When it’s my choice to be violent, certainly.”

The room, on inspection, was spare but serviceable; by no means the worst place Hisoka had ever slept. They unwound the traveling veil from their neck and laid it across the sheets, bending down to undo the clasps of their boots. They paused, half way done with the second, to find Gon watching them from the neighboring bed. His body was relaxed, but his eyes were intent.

“Yes?”

Gon shook his head, smiling faintly. “It’s nothing,” he said. “I just like watching you. You’re very graceful.”

Admittedly caught off guard, Hisoka undid another clasp much more slowly. “Am I?” they murmured.

They were unused to being admired when they were not actively putting on a performance. Even then the admiration was usually grudgingly given, which was fun, in its own way: coaxing a reaction out of a difficult target. But this was… perhaps enough to make them a bit shy. Rather than submit to the impulse, they drew back up, smoothing their hands down the length of their neck and over their sides.

“Would you like to see more?” they asked.

“You don’t have to put on a show,” Gon said, still smiling that faint little smile. “I think you’re beautiful whether you’re posing or not.”

Hisoka abruptly jerked their shirt over their head and stepped out of their shoes, and stalked across the floor to where Gon was seated. They planted a knee in the mattress at his hip, towering over him with narrow, glittering eyes.

“You should be careful how freely you give your compliments,” they said.

“Why?” Gon said.

“Because very little is ever free,” Hisoka replied, in a low voice, "and someone might get the wrong idea about your intentions."

"My intentions?"

"What you want," Hisoka said. They took Gon sharply by the chin, examining him. "What your endgame is."

"I don't have one," Gon said, plainly. "I don't play with people like you do."

For a moment Hisoka was perfectly still, and then they released their grip, lightly tucking a stray fly of black hair back into place. "No," they said, "I don't suppose you do. but I still wonder what you want." 

Gon made a little interested noise, as if he hadn't given it any thought until that very moment. Maybe he hadn't. "I guess," he said, "I want to get to know you. You know me, but I hardly know anything about you."

Hisoka's hand twitched, still hovering at Gon's ear. "What's there to tell? I am what I am."

"Anybody could say that," Gon replied, leaning forward. "I could say that. It doesn't mean anything."

Hisoka trailed their fingers through Gon's hair, down the curve of his neck: a warning. "Interesting argument," they said.

Gon didn't have the grace to flinch. He peered up at Hisoka’s shadowed face and said, “Will you tell me who your master was?”

Hisoka frowned deeply. “The past is a boring country. I loathe to visit it.”

“Tell me,” Gon said, “and I’ll kiss you again.”

“I could kiss you now, if I liked, and give you nothing for it.”

“You could,” Gon agreed, “but you won’t. It’s no fun kissing someone who won’t kiss back.”

Hisoka stared for a long moment, feeling somehow that the tables had been turned on them although they remained still much larger than Gon and looming heavily above him. The younger hunter was right, of course—you might as well fuck a corpse, for all the fun you would have. And what was the point of it without fun?

Point and counter point: dredging up history was no fun either. And still, Hisoka couldn’t bring themself to stand and walk away. Gon had little by little climbed to occupy a place that no other living human could claim, to a secret keeper and perhaps even confidant. Hisoka felt almost compelled to spill more of their life into Gon’s lap. It was as if a vacuum had been uncovered in the young man’s heart at that first fateful intimacy. All in all, they concluded at some length, there was little to be gained in resisting.

Hisoka knelt in front of Gon, resting their arms across the younger man’s legs.

“A teacher,” they said, “who lived with me here in the city for a time. Before we had to leave.”

“What did he teach you?” Gon asked.

“Ways to fight,” Hisoka said, setting their chin in their hands. “How to kill. How to kiss. Many things. I loved him, ahh, I loved him.”

“What happened to him?”

“I killed him, of course,” Hisoka answered. “I had little choice at the time, you see. It’s much more difficult to run than it is to strike.”

“Most people would say it’s the other way around.”

“Would they?” Hisoka replied, disinterested. “In any case, it was for the best. I’ve never seen another person die so beautifully. He thought that he had taught me everything I knew.” Hisoka closed their eyes, recalling the blood and the sweat and the fear as freshly as the moment that it had been new. “He was wrong, of course.”

Gon tilted his head, searching. “Do you still love him?”

“Death only distills affection, sharpens its potency. Like moonshine.” Hisoka ran a hand up the length of Gon’s thigh, over the crease of his hip. “But yes, I still love him especially. Nothing is ever quite like a first love.”

“Was that the first person you killed?”

“Oh no. No, there were others. He was the first I cared for, though, the first… intimacy.”

Gon nodded, maybe to himself. “Thanks,” he said.

“Whatever for?”

Gon shrugged. He took Hisoka’s hand from where it was tucked beneath their chin and intertwined their fingers with his. “For telling me things, I guess. Since you hate to do it so much. I promise I’ll keep it a secret for you.”

Hisoka blinked a couple of times. “Do what you like,” they said, eventually, and meant it.

Gon smiled. Every time it was like looking to the sun, a brightness impossible to accustom oneself to. He leaned in and kissed Hisoka softly, his lips warm and intent in each small movement, more tenderly than Hisoka had ever been kissed. It was surprisingly pleasant. Hisoka searched for the source of the pleasure that was welling up in them and, finding no immediate explanation, allowed the inquiry to die unattended at the back of their mind.

Pleasure was always, they thought, its own reason and justification.


	4. Champagne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> middle section written while listening to [ this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4d4yB-cm6E)
> 
> Thank you all so much for your overwhelmingly positive feedback--it's really made me happy during some trying times. Please feel free to come talk to me any time about Hisoka (or Gon) and what the hell is happening in their heads. This story has taken on a mind of its own and so maybe I should apologize for the content here? I didn't start this story planning to go in this direction. Gon is still seventeen. This is not legal.

The next time they met Gon, it was in the tower of the Heaven’s Arena, where Hisoka was whiling away another period of boredom between challenges. They had ventured down from their rooms to watch the fighters come and go, and had overheard two floor masters muttering in the corners of the cantina, too engrossed in conversation to notice an eavesdropper. Hisoka had slipped into the neighboring booth on a whim.

“But he’s older now,” said one, “and he didn’t seem like the type to plateau at thirteen, either.”

Hisoka perked up, casting their eyes towards the screen that separated this table from the next.

“Please,” said the other, “he’s just a kid. I don’t care what Terza says about him, it takes years of work to get to our level. You don’t even know who he’s going to challenge. You’re jumping the gun.”

“All I’m saying is, you can be as dismissive as you like. I’ve got a good thing going here and I’m staying out of the way for a while.”

Hisoka listened with half an ear to the rest of the comparatively dull conversation. Whenever the floor masters grew nervous about a potential change in the ranks, it paid to be interested. More than that though, Hisoka’s instincts were lining up the details in a terribly promising way…

 

 

Hisoka rarely came to watch others fight. They tended to distract themself with plotting moves for the players—a bit of a backseat fighter, to be honest—and it was difficult to enjoy the spectacle when they spent most of their time being disappointed that neither competitor was as creative or adventurous as one humble viewer on the sidelines. But for their favorites, sometimes they took the time to leave their rooms and pick a seat ring-side, where the blood was thick enough to taste in the air. They found that usually there was a seat reserved for the tower’s long time residents, and if there wasn’t, someone was always eager to give up their spot to a friendly face.

On that day, Hisoka was smiling down at a sweating man in a quite nice suit, who kept checking his companions for signs of solidarity. They had all found more interesting things to pin their attention on, all of a sudden. He was shifting uneasily in his seat.

The announcer had started reading the stats on the fighters. Gon was still a favorite, according to the woman behind the microphone, of the diehard fans who hadn’t forgotten events five years before. Ah, so they _were_ still circulating the tapes, after all.

Hisoka took their seat, generously contributed by the gentleman now lurking at the stairwell, and popped a stick of gum into their mouth. It had been a few months since they last saw Gon, and they had been quite surprised to hear word of him in this city, for apparently no reason except this fight. Was the opponent someone of interest? A revenge brawl? The mystery remained unanswered.

Hisoka cast an appraising eye over the competition. They knew of Terza vaguely. On another day they might have been mildly interested, but compared to the draw of Gon—Hisoka’s gaze slid across the ring to where the young man had emerged at last, casually stretching under the blazing light of the arena—ah, when Gon was in the room, who else could compare?

The stadium was an echo box of cheers as the fight launched, loud enough that the sounds of the ring were entirely drowned out. Gon moved like an impossible monster, as light on his feet as he was brutal. Indefatigable. The soles of his boots barely seemed to touch the ground as he dodged and struck, making the momentum of his body the force of his hits. This was new. Hisoka hummed appreciatively at the sight. Had he been diversifying his style over the last few years?

The competition managed to land a solid blow at last. Gon tumbled across the length of the ring, kicking up dust and shards of stone as he clawed desperately to halt his momentum. So that was it, then—an enhancer versus an enhancer. Hisoka blew a bubble and popped it sharply, drawing a disapproving glare from their immediate left. Inside the ring, Gon had finally skidded to a stop and was drawing himself up, wiping spit and blood from his chin. Hisoka’s fingers twitched against the fabric of their pants. _Mm,_ to kiss that sweetness from the tattered flesh...

Beside them, the disapproving neighbor went white and apparently decided that popping gum in public was not all that important after all.

The movement within the ring rose to a vicious frenzy—Gon threw his whole weight into a slam that sprayed concrete underneath the two bodies, rolling them across the floor with the force of it. Blow after merciless blow, Gon pounded away at his opponent, rearing up over them like a predator. Hisoka shifted in their seat, nails digging into thighs now, and felt the thick swell of bloodlust rolling through their belly. It poured off them, drawing uneasy looks from the seats on either side, boiling over until Gon himself paused in the ring, his nose in the air as if he were scenting a beast in the forest. With his arm drawn back, suspended mid-blow, he looked out through the glare of stage lights and found Hisoka’s eyes.

A familiar pull of tension raced through the fabric of the world, all consuming and all encompassing, until Gon’s opponent swung up and shattered the pause with a single blow. The stare broke. The fight resumed. Hisoka popped in another stick of gum to calm the bloodlust that was making their mouth water.

At its conclusion, Hisoka was unsurprised to see Gon, ultimately, named winner.

They abandoned their seat with little fanfare while the announcer was still proclaiming the victory, slipping down from the edge of seating and around the floor of the arena where, they were aware, the audience was not allowed to go. No one attempted to stop them. They waited in the dark tunnel of the fighters’ entrance, leaning against one wall, as Gon stepped breathlessly down from the demolished ring. In the white wash of the spotlights he was angelic, haloed with concrete dust and just bloodied enough to make Hisoka lick their lips, remembering copper and cherry wine.

Gon spotted them immediately, before he had even stepped out of the light. “I hoped you’d come watch,” he said, peeling his jacket from his shoulders.  

Hisoka only observed his approach, for a moment, taking in the cut of his dark silhouette against the tunnel’s entrance, the sound and smell of the arena. Eventually, they replied, “How could I resist?”

Gon smiled one of his pleased little smiles, the ones that made the rest of the world beyond him seem a hollow dream. “Would you like to walk with me?”

Hisoka gave a languid half shrug and said, “Lead the way.”

They made their way together to the changing room, leaving behind the thunder of an audience chatting and rising from their seats by the hundreds. Gon was unusually quiet, his eyes dreamy with the aftermath of the challenge. Hisoka admired the way his undershirt clung to him, hinting at the outlines of compact and powerful muscles. Each time they saw him there something newer, fuller and more right, about the grace of his physical shape. Behind the privacy of closed doors, they watched intently as Gon pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it across a bench. Gon faltered under the attention.

“Hisoka,” Gon said, “are you…?”

They drew a thumb lightly over the visible bulge in their pants, shuddering pleasantly at the sensation. “Don’t mind me,” they said, perching delicately on a bench, “I’m just admiring the view.”

In response, Gon actually flushed a lovely shade of pink. “You don’t care if someone sees?”

Hisoka gave him their most innocent expression. “It might be entertaining. Why, are you expecting someone?”

“Um, no. I don’t think so.”

Hisoka spread their legs a little wider, pointed lazily at Gon’s shorts. “Are you going to take _those_ off too?”

“Well I was,” Gon replied, glancing at the still quite closed door. “But now I think I had better not.”

“Spoilsport,” Hisoka hummed, and stretched upwards, drawing their hands above their head. The erection would pass in a moment or two, but for now it made every little motion feel unusually delicious.

As Gon retrieved his things and pulled on a new shirt, his eyes strayed back over and over again to the tent between Hisoka’s legs.

“You know it’s not going to go down if you keep looking at it like that,” they remarked, lifting an eyebrow. “And I assumed you wanted me to leave here with you, so you might prefer it if it did.”

Gon’s eyes snapped forward, and he finished the rest of his business with a vaguely harried look. By the time he was ready to go, things had settled down enough for Hisoka to stand, smooth the lines from their pants, and follow him out the door. A crowd of congratulators waited for them outside, many of whom fixed Hisoka with curious looks, clamoring for a better vantage point. Gon moved quickly but cheerfully through the midst of it, smiling freely at anyone who could catch his eye, until they were at last on the other side of the mob and safely tucked away in an elevator headed downward.

“I don’t know how you stand to live here,” Gon said, with a fond expression on his features. “You can’t get much peace.”

“It’s not always like this. You’re very popular here. There was quite the uptick in interest when your match was announced.”

“Aren’t you popular too?”

“I suppose. But I’ve lived here for a long time. You’re something,” they looked up and down the length of Gon, “new.”

“Oh,” Gon said, and turned pink again.

For a long time he said nothing else, until the elevator finally dinged for the ground floor and rolled its doors back, revealing a bustling, uninterested crowd. He stepped out of the elevator, expression serious, and then nodded to himself.

“I’ve decided,” he said. “This is our third date.”

“Oh?” Hisoka said, stepping out after him. “I don’t suppose it was necessary to consult me?”

“Do you not want it to be?"

“Hmm. I don’t mind,” Hisoka said. They smoothed back their hair, tucking a loosened lock back into place. “I would have worn something else if I had known, that’s all.”

Gon took a step back and gave the full length of Hisoka a once-over. “You look good,” he pronounced. “So don’t worry.”

Hisoka narrowed their eyes. “I didn’t say I was worried,” they murmured.

Although there were any number of places to eat up and down the height of the Heaven’s Arena, Gon remarked as they strolled out into the street, it seemed sort of like cheating to get dinner inside the building. It was apparently too much like a regular night of staying there, not at all suitable for a date. Better to go out into the city and look for some place out of the ordinary. More oblique dating etiquette, but with each encounter Hisoka felt that they were getting a better grasp on the rules of the game. The older hunter, easily more familiar with the town, guided the two of them to a suitable venue.

Having watched Gon crack the cheekbone of a floormaster had made them long for a drink as bright as that glittering moment. They had licked their lips in the stadium, suddenly thirsty and dry-mouthed, as Gon rose unsteadily to the sound of screaming cheers.

Over dinner at the restaurant with the white table cloths, as Gon insistently referred to it, the young man set down his menu and said, "You should spar with me."

"I don't spar," Hisoka replied, sipping champagne from a crystal flute.

Gon pushed back in his chair, eyes wide. It was inherently amusing to see him in high class surroundings, which was half the reason Hisoka suggested this restaurant to begin with. "You have to," he said, "how else are you gonna stay a top fighter?"

“I haven’t heard any complaints from my opponents,” Hisoka said, in a tone much lighter than their meaning.

“Well you’re incredibly strong, absolutely,” Gon said, without shame, “But you’d have to fall out of practice sooner or later.”

“I’ve been fighting since I was a child,” Hisoka said, dismissing the whole topic with the flick of their fingers. “I don’t forget.”

“You can’t go into the ring often enough to make up for it,” Gon pushed, “since you don’t fight people unless they’re strong enough to be interesting. You have to miss going through the motions. I know I would…”

“I’ve killed one too many sparring partners,” Hisoka replied. They tipped over Gon’s empty water glass with a careless flick and listened to it roll across the tablecloth.

“Please spar with me,” Gon said, leaning forward in his seat, “I’m strong enough not to get killed, at least.”

“Oh you think so?”

Gon nodded aggressively. “I might not be strong enough to beat you,” he said, “but I know I’m strong enough to hold you off, or to escape. I mean, it’s just sparring. You’re not going to knock my head off by accident.”

Hisoka sipped the last of their champagne and flicked their own glass over. “Do you know,” they said, “there’s a story about an ancient god whose lover asked them to play a game of discus with him? Their lover was beheaded by a careless throw. I couldn’t tell you where I heard it.”

“That’s morbid,” Gon observed, “and isn’t it a bit egotistical of you to compare yourself to a god?”

A smile split the line of Hisoka’s lips. They shrugged, reached out and righted both the glasses. “I can’t imagine who would accuse me of such a thing.”

The conversation paused, as their waiter arrived to take orders. The place had a good menu, as Hisoka had assured Gon during the walk here. There was no point in eating poorly when you could eat well.

At last, when the waiter had departed for the kitchen, they said, “I accept.”

“Accept what?”

“Your proposal to spar. If you want to live dangerously, I might as well benefit from it.” They lifted their crystal flute, newly refilled with champagne, and offered a toast.

“Awesome,” Gon said, and pressed the glasses together, rim to rim. The crystal sang against their touch.

Once upon a time, the world’s first taste of champagne had been compared to bottled stars. Hisoka licked pale, fizzing perfection from their lips and thought that they understood the comparison now, perhaps truly for the first time.

Gon had plenty to tell them, as their meal came and went. Hunting ventures, association business, news of old acquaintances—a trip was in the works with Gon’s father, there was unrest on the borders of the NGL wildlife preserve, Leorio was about to begin his residency—and Hisoka commented here and there, more interested in watching Gon’s face shift from one powerful emotion to another than in sharing any news of their own. Against the gauze of the eastern window, lights were coming on all along the length of the street. When it came around, Gon snatched up the check and had paid it before the waiter knew quite what hit him. That seemed like a gesture with some deliberate meaning behind it, but Hisoka could never be entirely sure when it came to Gon. It didn’t trouble them enough to ask.

Gon took their hand as they stepped out from under the eaves of the restaurant and into the tawny light of streetlamps, glowing like swollen stars. It seemed that Hisoka would never tire of the sensation, each time like new—the drag of calluses, the solidness of the grip, unexpected warmth. What an odd little pleasure, both easy and difficult to obtain. Rare and ordinary. _Like the night itself_ , they mused, observing the lights with new interest. A perfectly ordinary night, uneventful even, and well worth any gruesome price you might ask them to pay for it.

That, despite the fact that no one was demanding a price. Not yet, at any rate.

“I wish I could show you something better,” Gon said, wistful, as he swung their joined hands. “But you seemed to really like the fight, so I guess that’s pretty good.”

“You have no idea,” they replied.

In the darkness it was less strikingly apparent, but Gon went flushed again, from the tips of his ears to the arch of his nose. Interesting. Veiled allusions had hardly seemed to faze him before. As the flush faded, Gon’s eyes were fixed on the black shape of the Heaven’s Arena, cut out like paper from the indigo sky. He seemed to be thinking hard.

“Are you living in the tower?” he asked.

“Yes.” Hisoka glanced down at him. “Since you came here to fight, you should have a room too.”

Gon shook his head. “I didn’t arrange for one.”

“Leaving so soon?”

“No.”

Gon was quiet for a long time, and then all at once he seemed to become more solid, more present in the world—his eyes flashed with yellow lamplight.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about having sex with you,” he announced. His fingers tightened around Hisoka’s.

Hisoka tapped their lips. “Ah,” they said, “so that’s why you came here. You were looking for a third date all along.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” Gon admitted, “and I wanted to fight Terza too.”

Hisoka lifted a brow. “You’re sure now, are you?”

“Yes,” Gon said, and it was the most simple, absolute certainty Hisoka had ever observed.

In one swift motion they reached one arm out and caught Gon underneath the thighs, lifting him smoothly up off the ground. Their joined hands remained, extended above them. Gon had certainly grown taller than when they had first met, but seemed to be coming into his full height belatedly—the slight strain of the carry was a pleasant stretch in their muscles, not unduly difficult to accommodate for, and more than worth it to see the young man’s lips parting in surprise. His chest arched against Hisoka’s; his legs grasped for purchase on Hisoka’s hips and easily slotted around.

Gon’s breath came fast. His heart stuttered, bloomed into a volume that almost seemed to reach human hearing.

“Aren’t you pretty,” Hisoka said, “when you’re afraid.”

Gon’s left hand had found a hold around the curve of their neck. The skin beneath each individual finger was alight with its own feeling, incomparable to any fire Hisoka had ever touched. They tipped their chin away from it, rolling their head to expose still more skin for Gon's exploration.

“So what would you like now?” they asked, eyes fluttering shut. “Hm? Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

In their arms Gon tensed—his thumb shifted along the hollow of Hisoka’s throat—and he sank into the tight grip. He said, “Would you like to have sex with me?”

Hisoka let out a breathy little moan, eyes flashing open. Undoubtedly Gon could feel the stirring of interest against his body, and Hisoka smiled widely at the way his hands tightened in response,

“Oh dear,” they said, kneading the flesh cupped in their hand. “I’m afraid you’re a bad influence on me.”

"Bedroom," Gon panted, "let's get back to your bedroom."

"Ah," Hisoka said, heavily, "I suppose I did say whatever you wanted..." They set him down slowly, lingering in the intoxicating closeness for just a moment longer, and then tucked both hands into their pockets. "I suppose we had better keep walking then."

 

 

Hisoka slammed Gon against the back of the door, in the darkness of their apartment, and drew a heavy noise of surprise from the younger hunter. Along the far wall the curtains had been drawn back to show the gentle curve of the earth far below, blue in the starlight, and the golden edges of the city’s borders. The echo of light painted flashes of silver onto Gon’s cheekbone, onto his bared shoulder as the sleeve of his jacket slipped down, and onto the outline of his collarbone as he arched up into Hisoka’s kiss. They took his jaw in one hand, pushing his mouth to open wider—they hungered to lick up every taste of him, to consume him from the inside out.

Gon’s hands hovered and then settled, determined, over Hisoka’s ass. They made a throaty, appreciative little moan. In the hallway outside there was the sound of footsteps and muttering—the people who had ridden the elevator up with them, most likely, who had watched out the corners of their eyes as Hisoka had run a single finger, ever so lightly, over the shell of Gon’s ear. Hisoka remembered all at once the way Gon had seized up, lips parting, under that touch, and dug their nails into the body beneath them almost involuntarily.

They drew back. “ _Bed_ ,” they said. “Now.”

Gon licked his lips and looked up at them, dazed. He shucked off his jacket and made his way across the room, kicking off his shoes and shedding clothes as he went. Hisoka marveled, leaning back against the door, at the way Gon moved—eagerly, as graceful and confident as a wild thing. He paused at the edge of the bed, turned, tilted his head in a silent question.

“Be patient with me,” Hisoka murmured, sidling closer. They halted at arm’s length, drinking in the curves and lines of Gon’s leanly powerful form, the swell of his hardness, his lovely eyes rendered grey by the darkness. “I want to see everything.”

“That’s not really fair,” Gon said, setting his hands on his bare hips. “You’re still wearing all of your clothes.”

“Oh?” Hisoka said, eyes narrowing. They planted a hand in Gon’s chest and shoved him back onto the bedding, watching as he scrambled for purchase on the silk. “Did I say I was going to be fair?”

Gon’s cock bounced deliciously against his thigh, as flushed as his cheeks, and Hisoka crawled over the edge of the bed to be closer to it. They bracketed him beneath themself, running slow palms over thighs and up to the dip of hip bones, tracing a thumb over the length of that cock. They were certain that Gon could feel the deliberate echo of earlier, in the changing room. The heavy flesh twitched. Gon arched and reached out, touching Hisoka’s cheek with trembling fingers.

“Have you done this before?” they asked, running the sharp tip of a nail down his belly.

“Sort of,” Gon said, his voice more composed than his body. “Not with a…” he paused, thoughtfully. “Not with another dick.”

Hisoka dipped in closer, legs spread, knees on either side of Gon—they smiled sharply at the hitch of Gon’s breath. They were perfectly aware of what his view must be, how deep the arch of their back was, how it would look above him. This, now _this_ was a game they could win.

“Mmm,” they said, “wouldn’t I like to split you open and stuff you full of me.”

Gon groaned, hips bucking against nothing, and clutched at Hisoka’s arm. His gaze was hot, unbreaking—to be the creature on the other end of it was to be everything, immortal and untouchable at the center of creation. Hisoka burned underneath it.

“You _look_ like you want to eat me,” Gon replied, in a distant, absentminded voice.

“Ah, what a good place to start.”

They took him by the tender insides of his thighs and pushed both apart, spreading the loveliness between to their touch. While Gon tensed and shuddered below them, they pressed a kiss against the swollen head of his cock, consuming and drawing back and consuming again. They smeared the flavor of hot, pounding flesh over their tongue. This was the part they liked best: a body straining underneath them, unwrapped prettily and responsive, overwhelmed and alive. They licked up the delicate skin of the underside, over and over again, breath heavy and wet as they took everything they could swallow. Gon panted, his hands twisting the sheets and then lifting, hesitantly, to Hisoka’s temples. Gently but forcefully, he pushed Hisoka away.

“Slow down. Are you trying to embarrass me?” Gon asked, pink and breathless and still squirming even without Hisoka’s ministrations.

They wiped spittle and precum from their lips delicately, sucking the tip of their finger. “Why on earth would I do a thing like that?” they replied, a picture of innocence.

“Mmph,” Gon said. An elegant rebuttal. “Where do you keep your condoms?”

Hisoka sat up, pointed lazily at the bedside table. “The drawer.”

Gon rolled over and crawled up to the edge of the bed, shaking the table as he wrenched the drawer open a little too hastily. Hisoka watched his beautifully rounded ass as he rummaged around, impatient, his balls peeking out delicately between his thighs. The view was to die for. After a moment he came up with a triumphant little shout, the square of a wrapper between his fingers. He twisted, grinning, and tossed Hisoka the bottle of lube.

“Haven't  _you_  done your research,” Hisoka said, catching it smoothly. “Roll down the comforter, would you? Better not to do this on silk.”

Gon obliged, and then paused just in front of Hisoka, his hands buried in the sheets at their knees. He looked up, first at the erection straining their pants and then higher, over the length of them, meeting their eye. The hunger there was almost innocent, in its own way, absolutely pure and clear. Gon surged forward, all at once, and pulled Hisoka down onto the bedding, pinning them there as he undid their pants. He drew out their aching cock with firm fingers, the grip just this side of painful. Hisoka moaned and arched up into him, slipping their hands beneath their own shirt. Strange but thrilling, to be thrown down and held there—it had been such a long time since anyone had dared.

Gon wrapped a hand around their cock, his grip rough and unforgiving, and bent down to bite at their lips. He swallowed up the sounds that Hisoka made no attempt to quiet. He kissed in the same way that he jerked his fist over Hisoka’s length: demanding, intent, unrelenting. If you could bottle the stars that flashed and burned under Gon’s fingertips, the world would die thirsty for nothing else.

Gon drew himself up and wrapped his empty hand around Hisoka's throat. The weight of his body as he held himself up crushed the flow of air, choked them. "When we were in the hunter exam together, and you found me in the forest, you held me up like this," he said, tightening his fingers. "I think, even then, I might have wanted you."

Hisoka tipped their chin back and slid their hands up Gon's thighs, laying themself open. Their lungs burned, screaming for air. When Gon let go at last, it was to lift the condom from where it had fallen, a flash of silver in the sheets beside Hisoka's cheek. He peeled the wrapper from it with fumbling fingers while Hisoka drew in heavy, shuddering breaths. The foil fluttered like a slow, silver star as Gon tossed it carelessly over the edge of the bed. He bent and rolled it over the throbbing length of Hisoka's cock, while they lay lax and panting with arousal beneath him.

Gently, Hisoka hooked one finger under Gon's chin and lifted his face to the light. How lovely. How impossibly, perfectly lovely.

"I'm going to tear you apart," they said, in a voice roughened from abuse.

"Nnn," Gon said, grinding his hips down desperately, _"please."_

 

 

Late into the perfect darkness of the morning, while the world was quiet and even the streetlights far below had been extinguished, there was something Wrong. Hisoka surfaced from sleep at the insistence of an alarm that pumped through their body, flexing and releasing Ren even as their eyes had barely fluttered open. There was another body nearby—too close, well within striking range. They could feel the aura, seeping through an imperfect application of Ten, too strong to be anything but a threat. They reached out and lunged, dragging themself to crouch over the body. Unresponsive? They blinked sleep from their eyes, nails halted a hairsbreadth above unprotected flesh. Threat?

The boy— _Gon_ , their mind supplied, in a whisper—peered up sleepily at them. Gorgeous. Threat?

Slowly, telegraphing each little movement, the boy lifted a hand to Hisoka’s cheek.

“Hey,” he said, “shhh. It’s fine.”

Hisoka tensed, and then relaxed into the touch. They dropped their hand.

“Sleep,” Gon said, tugging them down to lie beside him, leaving their arm to rest across his chest. “Everything is fine.”

The room itself seemed to sigh softly, all around them. Hisoka traced the lines of the boy’s face with their thumb, searching for something—their attention alighted on the small upward curve of his lips and caught there, captivated by it. Hisoka remembered, in a hazy gush of memory, the sun half veiled by silver storm clouds. He had that same soft handsomeness. They dropped their hand.

Not a threat. Not yet, anyways. Hisoka allowed their eyes to fall closed, and the night to fall away softly into distant depths.

 

 

Hisoka’s condition for sparring was, of course, that they not use any of the various gyms in the Heaven’s Arena. Too breakable, they had said, too public, and too confining.

As a result, they stood on a hill overlooking the city, several miles from the spike of the tower. It was a pale morning, silver with the whispered suggestion of coming rain, and cool. Summer had weeks ago drifted into autumn. A little ways away, Gon was bouncing on the balls of his feet, running through a series of nen exercises for no reason other than to occupy his excess of energy. Hisoka had already pulled their shirt off and carefully folded it away.

“Alright!” Gon said, dropping his Zetsu in one neat flicker of effort. “I’d rather neither of us die right now, so no Hatsu, okay?”

Hisoka blew a bubble of chewing gum and popped it sharply.

“Actually, I don’t want to blow anything apart,” Gon said, peering around at the pastoral serenity of the hill. “I don’t know who owns this place. Let’s go with full on nenless, okay?”

Hisoka shrugged. “Okay,” they said.

Gon grinned, dropping into a low stance. “Okay,” he said. “Third hit wins the round.”

He dashed forward without any further warning. His forearm cracked against Hisoka’s as they blocked the first blow, bone ringing against bone. Hisoka mirrored his movements, catching a kick with their calf and spinning him backwards, end over end. They popped their gum as Gon righted himself in the freshly turned earth.

“Better if you don’t go easy on me,” Gon said, brushing off his legs. “I don’t want to be coddled.”

Hisoka narrowed their eyes. This time they lunged forward, loosing a barrage of blows that Gon retreated underneath, barely able to dodge. They feinted left and in the flicker of resulting confusion they slammed a knee into Gon’s chest, knocking him down and pinning him to the ground in a single economical movement.

“Like that?” they asked, blowing another bubble.

Gon’s dazed look morphed into a sudden smile, as if someone had switched on a lamp in a dark room. “Sure,” he said, “yeah, that’s better.”

Hisoka lifted off him and offered him a hand up. As Gon was pulling himself to his feet, they abruptly planted a heel in his gut and _shoved,_ throwing him back with such a force that he slammed bodily into a tree a couple meters away, shaking the entire thing from root to twig. They reached out, reeling in a thread of bungee gum suckered to Gon’s sternum, and jerked his whole body forward. He crashed into Hisoka’s waiting fist, hacking and falling limp around it.

“How about now?” they said, allowing the young man to slide down to the ground at their feet. Dust settled in clouds.

Gon squinted up at them, eyes watering. “We said no nen.”

Hisoka placed a hand on one hip. “If I was really full of killing intent,” they said, “do you think I would stop because I _promised_ to?”

Gon seemed to think pretty hard about this, wheezing softly. “No,” he said, at last, “but right now you’re not, so you don’t have any excuse.”

“I’m not interested in excusing myself.”

Gon pressed a hand onto his knee and stood carefully, especially beautiful with tracks of water through the powder of dirt on his cheeks. He wiped at them, carelessly, smearing the backs of his hands. “I know that you’re trying to make a point,” he said, “but I still want to do this.”

“You _are_ a stubborn creature.”

“Yep,” Gon said. He straightened up and settled into a looser fighting stance, more akin to his fluid style from the match yesterday. “But you like that about me.”

Hisoka shrugged. “My tastes are predictable,” they sighed.

There was a faint whisper of wind in the trees, a rising scent of rain from somewhere far away. Afternoon was arriving softly, in shadowed increments.

“Alright,” Gon said. “Hisoka one, Gon zero. Let’s try this again.”

Hisoka won two rounds. Gon announced the third a tie, although objectively he had landed two of the three blows. Hisoka wasn’t interested in battling the boy’s pride as well as his body, so they let it pass without argument. While Gon lay on the ground, dirt-streaked and bruised and breathing hard, Hisoka stood and stretched, fingers closing around the illusion of the sky that hung low above them. It seemed that if they could just extended a little more above themself, their nails could scour the clouds.

“You’re amazing,” Gon said, laid out near their feet.

They paused, mid-stretch, and glanced down. It occurred to them that they did not actually know anymore how to take a compliment given in sincerity, from someone they had any fondness for.

“Thank you,” they said, at last, and finished their stretch. “But it won’t be long before you are as strong as I am.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Gon said, frowning slightly.

“What else could you mean?”

“I mean…” Gon started. He rolled over in the dirt, unbothered by it, and propped his cheek up on one hand. His boots kicked up little puffs of dust. “You’re powerful, sure, but you’re also really good at fighting in a way that’s unique to you. And you’re beautiful. And I like you.”

Hisoka planted their feet a little more firmly in the earth. “Do you?” they said.

“Well sure,” Gon said, “you’re my friend, aren’t you?”

Hisoka abruptly turned and went to retrieve their shirt, frowning down at it as they shook the creases out. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

Gon was quiet for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “You didn’t know.”

Hisoka pulled on their undershirt and then moved on to the overshirt. “Friendship is all a bit esoteric. I tend to avoid the subject.”

“It’s okay,” Gon said, pleasantly bowling right over Hisoka’s subtle attempt to close the subject, “I wasn’t sure at first either. But you like me, and you’ve helped me and you taught me a lot, and when we’re together I feel really good about everything, even things that normally bother me.”

It would have been easier to react to if there had been some kind of hidden barb in the confession, some manner of subtle manipulation to pry free. But with Gon there was only ever one manipulation, the unapologetic and obvious: to love him for exactly what he was. Whatever he said, he meant.

Hisoka stepped across the grass, placed their hands on their hips and bent over him. The dim shape of their shadow covered his body in a barely-there darkness, under the grey light of the impending rain.

“Come back to the tower,” they said, “and let me fuck you.”

That, at least, they understood.

 

 

In the winter Gon passed through again, stopping off for a few days between cities while there was no urgent rush to return to his friends at the Hunter’s Association. Hisoka was surprised to see him again, for so little a price as an invitation to dinner, and with so little reservation about his affection. But this, apparently, was what it meant to be numbered among Gon’s friends: an inexhaustible well of attention and interest.

Well. Inexhaustible for now. Hisoka took everything they could get, fully aware of how changeable the tides of affection could be. One day treasure, the next day trash. There was nothing easier in the world than to find oneself discarded. In the light of a fading afternoon, Hisoka held Gon perched in their lap, in the armchair by the grand stretching window, and bit dark heavy mark after dark heavy mark into the young man’s chest and shoulder. Those would heal in a matter of weeks. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the moment of the bite, the arch and whimper, the bauble of memory collected and secreted away. This, they could keep.

 


	5. Shots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's time for an adventure!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, this is not a chapter I originally planned to write, but once I had the idea I couldn't let it go. I'm sorry it took so long to get out. There are reasons but, eh, let's move on.  
> Written while listening to[ this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlIeCJWevCI), for no particular reason.

In the midst of the summer rush, while the streets below the Heaven’s Arena were packed with families from every city on the continent all vying for the last tickets to the Battle Olympia, Hisoka returned to their rooms to find an email lying patiently in wait. They had very few contacts, between the few former spiders who had sworn them off for dead and their continued disinterest in socializing within the arena, so it was both surprising and not to find that the sender was only the Hunter’s association. Hisoka tapped it open as they unlaced their boots, body and boots and phone and all burrowed into the cushions of the sofa. Everything was twice as trying and twice as boring when the roads swelled and flooded with people like this, as if the city caught the runoff of spring thawing in the high country. Perhaps Gon would be back again soon, or Illumi would have some favor to call in. Anything to break up the tedium of tourist season.

With that in mind, Hisoka skimmed the subject line of the association’s email and lit up with interest. _Janitors needed_ , it read. The somewhat cryptic, characteristically reserved message was calling for assistance elsewhere on the continent, where a prison—a hypothetical prison, which certainly did not exist—might have experience an outage—the nature of which was carefully and deliberately passed over—and some perhaps dozens of convicts had slipped free in the ensuing riot. If such a thing had happened, of course crime hunters and strong fighters would be invited to come clean up the spill. Hisoka’s eyes lit on the penultimate sentence.

Dead or alive.

Hisoka dropped their phone carelessly and swung up off the nest of cushions, making their way to the walk-in closet with a renewed spring in their step. A scavenger’s pick of invisible, unregistered criminals, class A bounties and heel-turned hunters? Surely something interesting would happen. It had been ages since anything interesting had happened in the world.

Hisoka packed a bag and left the tower the day that the email went out.

They arrived in the north to find the countryside in the middle of utter chaos. Civilians were evacuating. The border guard were patrolling for miles along a wall that looked hastily erected and about as intimidating as those shiny little guns. Hisoka strolled back into the nearest town, rented a storage locker from the frantic attendant at the gym, and left everything but the clothes on their back inside. The turrets had machine guns mounted. Hisoka watched them with a smile for a few minutes, charting their movements and the rotations of their barrels, before moving on to the patrols that stalked the near side of the wall. Certainly they would be enough to hold off any mundane criminal, but not much more than that. Hisoka put on their friendliest face and approached the passing squad.

“Excuse me,” they said, giving a little wave.

The guards reeled back, dug in their shiny boots, and pointed four rifles directly at Hisoka.

“Would any of you happen to be nen users?” Hisoka asked, continuing forward.

“Don’t come any closer or we’ll shoot,” the sergeant barked.

Hisoka tilted their head. “You should have already done that,” they said. The air was still and empty of the telltale charge that nen always brought. It was a perfectly mundane night, and these gentlemen were equally, disappointingly ordinary. Satisfied that there was nothing interesting to be done on this side of the wall, Hisoka turned their attention to the other side of it. No trees for quite a ways. Ah, but that was only a minor setback.

The squadron apparently decided that this was quite enough. They opened fire, but the air they shot at was already empty. Hisoka snapped taunt a strand of bungee gum and allowed the elasticity to snatch them upward, toward the ledge of the wall. They flipped neatly up onto it and detached the strand, stepping into the momentary blind spot of the turret before leaping down on the other side. After that it was only a matter of speed to leave the arc of fire far behind them.

Child's play, really. They hoped that the prison had been far enough from the border to necessitate some travel, or the convicts might just have already scattered into the corners of the earth.

The region had been densely forested, at one time, but all that remained now were stumps for quite a long distance. Hisoka made their way through the no-man’s land as quickly as they could, senses tuned and searching for the whisper of power that would herald something worth investigation. By the time the sun was rising, purple and dim through the distant frill of forest just over the edge of the world, the information on the wind had changed. There was something mouth-watering to the southwest, beyond the ridge of trees. Something was hot with power there, enough for a small camp of average nen users, boiling almost.

Hisoka arrived at the heart of the maelstrom just in time to watch a tree split down the middle, molten like the core of a sun where the wood parted from itself. A figure drew back from the wreckage, dark against the glowing heat under its hand. Hisoka paused at the edge of the forest’s remaining dimness, rapt, and watched. They would know that silhouette anywhere, at any distance, in any light.

Ah, _Gon._ The bouts of sparring scattered sporadically over the last few months had in no way prepared them to see this, ferocious and almost mindless with intent. And the opponent? Hisoka lifted their eyes to the figure that hung, observing, from the limb of another tree above. She wore the spare, dull uniform of convicts in every institution, the grey arms of the jumpsuit tied around her waist. The air here was heavy with energy, and even when divided by Gon’s _overwhelming_ baseline, that still left a hefty sum for the woman who was currently picking twigs from her short hair.

Gon craned his neck back to peer up at her. “There’s still time for you to give yourself up,” he called to her, in leaden tones that belied the friendliness of the words. “It’s never too late to turn back.”

“Honey,” his opponent called down, “you think that scares me? I’ve been in the clink with class A bounties for seven years, you’re nothing I can’t handle.”

Calculations, calculations. Left alone, this fight could prove to be a marvelous spectacle. But this was not the Heaven’s Arena, and there would be no triage unit on hand to mop up the mess afterwards—although Gon was an enhancer to rank with the best of them, Hisoka was under the impression that he had never bothered to train his healing skills in proportion to his killing power. The long term effects had to be accounted for. An untreated battle wound could be as devastating to a career as any inborn lack of talent. In any case, Gon had rather spent enough time in hospitals before now, as far as Hisoka was concerned.

“If you change your mind at any point from now on,” Gon was announcing, slipping into a familiar battle pose, “I’ll honor your surrender.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I don’t plan to stop for anything.”

Hisoka pushed aside the cover of draping branches and picked their way through the underbrush to the brightness of the clearing, where the sky was dimly yellowed with morning overhead.

“What a lovely thing to hear,” they said, opening their palms. “Could I, perhaps, cut in?”

Gon jolted, a fraction of a second faster than the woman in the tree, and turned aside to stare at Hisoka. There was a smear of blood across his cheek, pale with sawdust. He frowned at Hisoka.

“This is my fight,” he said.

Above them, the convict sniffed—animalistic, eyes narrowed, her shoulders shifting warily. “My quarrel isn’t with you,” she said, glancing towards the woods behind the two of them. So then there was something more she wanted, more than a simple escape.

“An inmate with your level of firepower?” Hisoka replied. “I don’t particularly care who your quarrel is with. I would like to see you in action, that’s all.”

“You make it sound so innocent,” she said, twitching back further into the foliage, “but I've known plenty of your sort.”

And without further ado, she was gone. The leaves of the forest rattled with the swiftness of her passing, a spare few fluttering slowly to the earth behind her. Whatever her goals were, she had seemed intent enough on them, but perhaps Hisoka had overestimated her abilities?

“How disappointing,” they sighed.

Gon turned towards them, now, crossing his arms. He had fully abandoned his battle-readiness, standing with his hip cocked and his guard deliberately, pointedly, lowered.

“Hisoka,” he said, “I’m very glad to see you, but I didn’t need you to interfere there. Even if I had trouble, Killua was bound to be back in a matter of seconds.”

“All the more reason to move quickly,” Hisoka said, shrugging carelessly, “if I wanted a shot at her myself.”

Gon continued to give them that hard look, and probably would have kept it up until Hisoka deigned to say something else, except for at that moment Killua appeared precisely as predicted. They both, Gon and Hisoka, glanced over to where he had stalled in his tracks at the far edge of the clearing. Killua hesitated there, sparks crackling between the tips of his fingers and over the wild landscape of his hair like St. Elmo’s Fire.

“Gon?” he said, attention snapping to the young hunter. “What’s going on?”

With a perfect easiness, like ice melting into water, Gon shifted out of his stern pose and into earnest friendliness—it was fascinating to watch, the contrast as stark as the result was convincing, and Hisoka could not manage to believe it wasn’t calculated in some way. When he smiled, Killua seemed to melt a little as well.

“Hisoka shooed her off,” Gon said, “at least for now. You can go back to Lock, he could probably still use the protection.”

Killua gave him an irritated little look. “You sure like to tell me what to do,” he muttered, not at all quietly.

“Sorry Killua,” Gon said, clasping his hands together but smiling all the same.

“What’d _they_   want?” Killua said, nodding in Hisoka’s direction. The crackle of energy around him had died down to a low static, along with the wilting wildness of his hair.

Gon threw Hisoka a pointed glance—just a flash of a second, but enough to suggest that he would _also_ like to hear the answer—before replying, “Oh, you know. Wintres is pretty strong.”

Killua made a little knowing noise. He looked Hisoka over once, briefly, as if confirming a diagnosis, and then disappeared in a flash of light. His Hatsu? Hisoka licked their lips, eyeing the crackling tracks his retreat had left in the grass. What a promising surprise.

“Are you going to go after her?” Gon asked.

Hisoka turned back to the younger hunter, who stood dark and solid amidst the delicate grasses—yellow and white flowers with their heads tipped upwards towards the summer sky, blades of leaves as thin as thread. The last time they had seen him, they had broken his wrist in a sparring match. It had been spring. He spent a week afterwards lamenting it from a pile of pillows in Hisoka's bedroom.

“No,” they said, “I’m sure she’ll be back. She didn’t seem the type to give up so easily.”

The rising light painted delicate contours over Gon’s frown, gentler than the height of day would have. “I guess not,” Gon said, his eyes on the direction through which she had escaped. Presumably, he had come here to hunt escapees as well. The real question was why he hadn't already chased after this Wintres woman himself.

"What is she after?"

Gon sighed. "I'm not sure—I mean, she wants us all dead, I'm just not sure why she's so hellbent on it. It seems personal. We weren't even originally following her trail."

Hisoka placed a hand on one hip. “Perhaps I should travel with you a while, then? It’s bound to be interesting.”

Gon seemed to give that a moment of serious thought. “Well,” he said, “if you want to, I guess that’s alright. You don’t need to watch me though, Killua has already decided that’s his job. I think taking care of Alluka is making him into a mom.”

Hisoka raised an eyebrow. “I promise you I have no intention of fighting Killua for mothership of you.”

“Well that’s good, because you’d have to get in line behind Aunt Mito.”

Gon tucked his hands into the pockets of his shorts, making his way towards them through the tall grass. It parted around him like an endless supplicating crowd, and Hisoka thought of the nature of wilderness. In time, this clearing would produce a tree that would stretch over all this sunlit greenness and blot out the life there. It was only in the wake of fallen giants that new grass could grow again.

“I _am_ glad to see you,” Gon said, as he came to a halt in front of Hisoka. “I don’t know how long this mission will take. I thought I might not see you for a while.”

Hisoka tilted their head. “It would have been very dull,” they agreed.

The smile came all of a sudden, a proxy for the sunrise invisible behind the thickness of forest—as if all the sternness of earlier had melted into nothing, leaving no trace behind. Hisoka found it both troubling and a relief, and could not identify the source of either feeling.

“Dull enough that you would consider taking on a fighter of her class alone,” they added. “Dull indeed, apparently.”

Gon’s smile dropped. “I could have handled it,” he said. “I’ve handled worse.”

Hisoka hummed noncommittally. “I heard a bit of rumor about that,” they said. “Of course you haven’t told me anything about it, but wasn’t that precisely how you came to be so tragically hospitalized a few years ago?”

Gon had the self-consciousness to go a little red in the cheeks, although he didn’t look away. “You make sacrifices if you really want to win,” he replied. He clenched his fist a couple times, just the one, opening the fingers as if he was trying to jumpstart his circulation. “You’re the one I learned that from,” he added, “I saw you fight in the Heaven’s Arena once, before our match.”

Ah. Back when they had been graced by Machi’s continued tolerance. There would be no Machi for either of them in the foreseeable future, unfortunately. Hisoka wondered if Gon truly understood this.

“Your resources are finite,” they remarked, mildly. “A good fighter knows their limits.”

Gon looked up at them, his eyes blank of anything at all. “But if I was like that,” he said, “you wouldn’t be interested in me, would you?”

Hisoka blinked down at him. For a moment there didn’t seem to be anything correct to say to that, either truth or lie. _Was_ that the case? Hisoka had never considered it. Certainly, they imagined that if Gon were more cautious by nature then he never would have selected a thing like Hisoka to press his affections onto. But the reverse was more opaque.

Above Gon, the first glare of the oncoming sun was forcing its way through the leaves. In this place, exposed to the sky, it would be a brilliant and scorching day.

“Here,” Gon said, taking their hand, “I’ll show you back to the camp. I’ve got loads to catch you up on.”

When they arrived at the campsite, Gon's hand was still twined in theirs. He let go to dart off after some suddenly remembered task he had left half completed, but not before Killua spotted them. He gave their hands a sharp, suspicious look as Gon withdrew his fingers, the calloused pads dragging against Hisoka's as if the very skin itself was reluctant to part. They watched him go, until he disappeared behind the bulk of a sturdy canvas tent.

Killua planted himself in the middle of the makeshift camp, but his arms were crossed tightly over his chest rather than locked into a battle-ready stance. _So,_  Hisoka concluded, unhappy but willing to play nice. My, he had grown. It seemed he was going to err on the side of his father and eldest brother where genetics came into play. His snow white hair remained as stubbornly a mess as it had been years before. Illumi was probably livid about it.

“Killua~” Hisoka said, with a playful little wave at the boy in question. “What an unexpected pleasure to find you here as well. I thought you would be too busy babysitting? How is the sweet child?”

Oh, what a transparent reaction.

“Who told you?” Killua replied, his delicately slanted eyes narrowing.

“Alluka is with Leorio back at the association,” Gon shouted, from somewhere behind the tent.

Killua spun around. “You can’t just say that you idiot! That’s sensitive information!”

Gon’s head poked out from around the edge of the heavy canvas. “But Killua,” he said, “you told me the association is the safest place in the world to leave something precious. It would be too much trouble to break in.”

“Do you think _that,”_ Killua hissed, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in Hisoka’s general direction, “would stop _them_ , if they decided to take an interest?”

Gon met Hisoka’s eye. It was a neutral, expectant look, one that was not used to being disappointed. “You wouldn’t try to hurt Alluka, would you?”

“Of course not,” Hisoka lied. Then, more truthfully, added: “it would be an awful lot of trouble, you are correct.”

Gon nodded, and then disappeared. “Anyways,” he added, “Hisoka is much more interested in the prison break than your sister, Killua.”

Killua looked from the tent to Hisoka and then back again, his expression screwed up into suspicion and displeasure. Hisoka smiled brightly at him. How little did he know, and how much could Hisoka play with him before he caught on?

A flicker of movement caught their eye. At the edge of the camp someone was slinking along, trying to remain out of the line of sight. Hisoka slipped a card into their palm and flicked it towards the shifting shadows. It embedded quivering in the bark of a tree, perhaps a handspan from the stranger’s nose.

“And who is this?”

Killua glanced towards the man, who was breathing hard and staring at the playing card lodged innocuously in front of his eyes. “That’s Lock. He used to work at the prison, but he hightailed it when the prisoners started to riot. We said we’d help him get out,” Killua said, shrugging. “Regardless of whether he asked for help or not, apparently.”

Hisoka strolled over to where the man was frozen, mid step, and plucked the card from the tree. “Sorry about that,” they said, “it’s so dangerous in these woods. I must have gotten jittery.”

Lock stared at them with blown pupils. “It,” he said, “it’s nothing.”

He seemed to be looking from Hisoka to wherever Gon had ducked over to, furiously drawing conclusions based on—they imagined—how dangerous they appeared to be versus how little real concern anyone seemed to be showing at their presence.

“Will you be staying with the, the boys?” Lock asked them, clutching one wrist in the other hand.

“ _No_ ,” Killua called over.

“No?” Hisoka echoed.

“Of course,” Gon said, as he passed behind them with his arms full of twigs and brush.

Killua’s pretty face went deathly pale. “What? Gon? What are you saying? Come back here!”

Hisoka simply smiled, returning the lone card to their deck as Killua raced off after his more hospitable friend. Lock shifted from one foot to the other, half ready to bolt into the forest behind him. He had an insubstantial appearance, the heaviest thing about him the black tangle of his hair, and his mussed clothes spoke of an urban life, nothing too fancy but fairly comfortable for all that.

“So,” they said, as if Killua hadn't just explained the same thing, “what brings a man of your sort out here in these troubled times?”

“I w—work at the prison,” Lock answered.

“A meek little thing like you? How interesting.”

“I’m not a guard or anything,” Lock said, drawing back. “I just—I do acquisitions. I work in an office.”

Hisoka took him by the chin, turning his stricken face this way and that. No trace of nen leaked into their fingertips. Hisoka readily admitted that they knew very little about the ins and outs of the organization that they technically belonged to, but it would be reasonable to conclude that there were not enough nen users in the world to fill every single paper-pushing position in the offices. How disappointing.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Hisoka said, letting go at last. “Any friend of Gon’s, et cetera.”

“P-pleasure’s all mine,” Lock stuttered back.

Hisoka eyed the dark shadow of a tattoo beneath the man’s buttoned cuff as he absently rubbed at the reddening spots on his chin. Not a spider, they decided at some length. But still, perhaps a recognizable shape. They continued to stand beside the twitching man as they surveyed the camp properly, noting its outline and resources and a place for a fire that hadn’t gone out yet. Possibly some helpful authority figure had told Lock a long time ago that the worst thing you could do in the presence of a hunter was run. Probably they had meant a different kind of hunter, but the advice was still quite good. Hisoka pointed at the open space on the clearing floor.

“Do you have a second tent?” they asked, leaning a bit closer than Lock seemed to like.

“No, I, that is we,” he swallowed, “they only had one for themselves. I’ve been on the run for days, I haven’t had time to do anything but fold up this tarp.” He pulled the sheet of plastic from the bag over his shoulder, holding it up between their two bodies like a shield. “Do you… have something?”

“No.”

“No?”

Hisoka shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on sleeping. I left all my things in the last town back.”

“O-oh.”

"And where are you all heading to?"

"There's an, um, a checkpoint a few miles east? I need to get out of this country and the boys said they... wanted to help."

"Hmmm. You know the border is just a little walk back that way. Why not simply cut through as the crow flies?"

Lock looked over his shoulder, as if the wall might be visible from here. "We couldn't possibly," he said, puzzled. "The border guard is on high alert—"

“Tsk. The border guard?” Hisoka shook their head. “I just came that way. Hardly much of a deterrent.”

Gon reappeared while Lock was giving Hisoka more of those amusing bewildered looks, trailing Killua behind him. He had shucked his jacket, and in the morning light his sun-darkened skin had a radiance that dimmed everything around it. Hisoka promptly forgot about Lock’s entire existence.

“Gon,” they purred. “I was just saying that you might as well travel directly to the border and skip all this tedious checkpoint business. I wouldn’t mind clearing a path for you, if you asked nicely.”

“Those guards haven’t done anything to us,” Gon replied, setting down a heavy traveling bag. In his other hand there was a length of coiled rope. “You’d just kill them all to get us across, since Lock isn't a fighter and I won’t leave him.”

“Ah, Gon,” Hisoka said, cupping their cheek in one palm, “you must think me an absolute brute.”

“Don’t act hurt, I know you don’t mind. Anyways,” he added, “you can think of the journey as more opportunities to see Wintres in action.”

Behind Gon, Killua was shifting from foot to foot as if he were on the verge of launching himself forward. Hisoka wondered what Gon had said to him, how he had been convinced. He hung back liked heeled dog, savage potential held at bay by the gossamer strands of his master’s orders. It must have been just barely enough. Perhaps Gon had mentioned Wintres' aversion to Hisoka's presence.

“We’re packing up the camp,” Gon said. “Would you give us a hand? We’ll cover more ground today if we can start out sooner.”

“Of course,” Hisoka said, still eyeing Killua. “What would you like me to do?”

As the morning passed, the site came apart piece by piece. Hisoka found a myriad of little reasons to touch Gon, as they worked; they trailed a nail over the nape of Gon’s neck as they passed behind him, laid a palm over his hip to get his attention, lifted things from his hands and allowed their fingers to brush. Each time they observed Killua just at the edge of their vision, bristling. As Hisoka lingered in a thank-you to Gon, tucking back a strand of his wild hair, a metal tent peg in Killua’s hands snapped in two. Hisoka glanced aside at him, as they pulled back unhurriedly, and met his eye.

Ren swelled and crackled over Hisoka’s skin, full of heavy warning and killing intent. Hisoka shivered, fingers resting against their lips. It was an absolute pleasure to discover that they wouldn’t even need to hurt someone to gain Killua’s violent enmity—they could get it just by indulging in the sweetness of Gon’s touch. The possibilities were as delicious as they were endless. There were so many delightful things Hisoka could show him…

“Killua,” Gon said, sternly, turning from the tent pegs he was bundling. “You’re scaring Lock.”

All three of them looked to the edge of the camp, where Lock was frozen in place, looking a little green. Killua dropped the aura belatedly, shoulders hunched. “What about _them?”_ he demanded, glaring at Hisoka.

Gon gave Hisoka a questioning look. Hisoka shrugged, smiling blandly. Gon returned his attention to Killua. “What did they do?”

“They keep _touching you_ ,” Killua snarled, “You’re probably covered in bungee gum by now!”

Gyo flashed around Gon’s eyes, as he held up his arms for inspection. “I don’t see anything.”

Killua’s teeth clicked together, and then he turned on his heel. “Forget it,” he said.

The rest of the morning passed without incident, but Hisoka felt eyes on them even while Killua was out of sight. Almost everything fit into two bags, one of which Gon took up without discussion and threw over his shoulder, and the remainder of their things went into the travel case that Lock carried. Killua picked up the second travel bag and lobbed it at Hisoka, who caught it in one hand.

“If you’re gonna travel with us, you’re gonna pull your weight,” Killua informed them, a challenging edge to his voice.

“Certainly,” Hisoka said. “And what will you be carrying, Killua?”

“Your corpse,” Killua replied, “if you step out of line.”

Hisoka fluttered their lashes. “You are so like your brother,” they said, “in the prettiest little ways.”

The trek through the forest took up most of the day. Gon more or less led the party, while Killua came and went on scouting dashes in all directions, and so it was simple for Hisoka to take up an easy pace at Gon’s side. As birds passed overhead Gon would point to each, identifying breeds and habits, tugging on Hisoka’s shirt to get their attention as if he had ever lost it. Trees, tracks in the grass, burrows concealed under webs of roots—Gon had something to say about all of it, bright with enthusiasm for every odd fact or sudden tangential memory. Hisoka watched him move, animated and full of life, and decided they had been rather hasty when they had once assumed they would dislike hiking. As with most things, it was simply a matter of company.

They traveled perhaps two thirds of the necessary distance when the sun began to set ahead of them, plunging the forest all at once into a cool dusk. Gon lifted his head, peered around the wilderness, and announced that it was time to put up camp again. For Lock, he explained, when Hisoka made a pointed observation about the distance and a hunter’s stamina. Camp, unfortunately, it was then.

As Hisoka stamped the last of the tent pegs down, perhaps half an hour later, Gon appeared at their side with his old fishing rod over his shoulder. In his hand there was that length of rope again, neatly coiled.

“I’m going hunting,” Gon announced, as if the rod and rope weren’t enough to guess. “Would you like to come with me? Killua can’t complain about me endangering myself if you’re along too.”

Hisoka cast a glance over at Killua, who looked anything but satisfied. “Oh,” they said, “I bet he could think up a reason or two.”

Gon only smiled. “No way. Between the two of us, nobody would stand a chance!”

A flicker of pleasure passed through Hisoka, bright and warm, and a little bit startling. They pressed a palm to their throat, wondering if they could feel that sensation right through the skin. Only the faint thrum of a heartbeat met their fingers.

Once he was out in the darkening forest, Gon moved like a shadow. Hisoka followed along behind, mindful of the comparative heaviness of their own footfalls.

“I’m afraid I don’t have your talent for stealth,” they admitted, as Gon clambered up the rough twist of an ancient tree above them.

“You’re pretty quiet!” Gon replied. With a neat little twist he swung down from a branch, hanging by his knees. His nose was just a bit higher than Hisoka’s. “In the country like this, you’re probably as quiet as Killua.”

Hisoka reached up, threading their fingers through Gon’s hair. “I suppose that’s a compliment,” they said. “Although I don’t think the Zoldycks were trained much for rural environments.”

“He did a great job when we were fighting the chimera ants. Don’t underestimate him.”

Hisoka lingered for a moment, and then let go. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Gon swung down, landed softly in last winter’s leaves, and then carried onwards. The two of them were looking for some kind of rabbit, apparently, down in the hollows of the forest where the ground disappeared under a darkness as thick as liquid. It seemed that the evening had become a marsh beneath them, ready to swallow their footsteps whole. Hisoka lingered in a twisted cradle of oaks as Gon worked complicated knots in the rope he had laid across the underbrush, his knees stained wet with dirt like dark bruises. They were perfectly content to watch each precise movement blurred by the film of darkness. In the morning, Gon told them, he would check the traps before they left the region. He had done it this morning too, apparently.

Gon looked up at them as he tied off the last knot. "The way your eyes catch the light," he said, "they flash. Like a cat's."

"Perhaps I'm hunting you," Hisoka said, tilting their head a teasing fraction of an angle.

Gon re-coiled the last length of unused rope, smiling faintly, and then returned to the copse where Hisoka waited. His boots seemed to glide over the invisible earth. "Would you like me to teach you snares?" he asked.

Hisoka shrugged, turning their head aside. "It's a useful skill, but I'd much rather watch you than learn it."

Gon looked down at the rope in his hands, and then back up at Hisoka. "You're already teaching yourself, aren't you?"

"I might be able to replicate the basics," Hisoka answered, ever modest.

"You know, you don't have to do everything on your own. It can be better with a teacher. More fun, even." Gon paused, thoughtfully, and then added, "You've taught me a lot, Hisoka. Sometimes I want to show you something in return."

Decades ago, in the pits of a city built like a crypt, the ceiling there glittered with a sea of ancient trash and a man smiled. In the rubble of a grand building, a handkerchief fluttered towards the earth. There was an order to these things: mentors, knowledge, death. Hisoka had learned them all firsthand.

"I thought you didn't like to owe people," Hisoka said.

"Yeah," Gon said, with a frown so serious it was comical. "That's the point."

Hisoka opened their hands, the tips of their nails delicate and pale in the night. "Then don't," they said. "I've done everything for my own sake. If you benefitted, it was only a happy accident. Don't think of yourself as indebted to me, if you don't want to be."

Gon stepped closer, reached up, and took Hisoka's face in both hands. "That's not like you," Gon said. "To let someone go like that."

Hisoka lowered their lids at him, leaning into one warm palm. "Who says I'm letting you go?"

For a moment, they were both quiet. A night bird called in the distance, echoing and strange. Then Gon drew back. “You like to show me things,” he said. “What do you know that only you know?”

Hisoka looked up. The canopy above them was dense and dim, save the flashes here and there of starlight that broke through the leaves. They knew any number of things, many of which they had no intention of ever sharing. But Gon was asking for a way to make them even again—if Hisoka wouldn’t accept payment in kind, then the trade would have to be more of the same, at Hisoka’s discretion. They considered this for a moment. Gon wasn’t wrong in his assessment: Hisoka was never one to let their prey off the hook. And yet they had no interest in calling in some nebulous concept of debt to be easily ticked off and done away with. The trick was to reel the prey in ever closer, so that each attempt to draw back pulled the hook ever deeper. Intimacy: unquantifiable.

The trick, they decided, was to give Gon what he wanted under the guise of taking a payment. And they already knew what Gon wanted from them.

“You can get up above the canopy, can’t you?” they asked.

“Sure,” Gon said. He looked around for a moment, and then pointed to a heavy pine a little ways away. “That one should go high enough.”

Hisoka grinned. In a flash they were gone, scaling the height of the ancient tree in a few precise leaps, leaving Gon startled in their wake. A moment later, Gon flipped up to perch like a cat on a branch at Hisoka’s shoulder, surveying the world below curiously. The forest spread out ahead of them, dipping and rising and fading into void at the edge of sight. In the moonless night, the sky appeared to be a froth of white stars.

“This is kind of like sitting on the world tree,” Gon remarked, above them. “So, what should I be looking at?”

Hisoka pointed upwards towards the star that burned due east. “After I left Meteor City,” they said, “I traveled north. After living in that tomb, the first clear night above ground—” They sighed, lifting that bauble of beauty from the wreckage of its surrounding memories. “The thickness of it, like a heavy tide—the brightness, the oddity, and the world below so empty and dark. It was lovely. There are infinite moments of pleasure ahead of us, inexhaustible.”

Gon was looking down at them now with the same curiosity he had given the world below. Hisoka kept their sights set on the sky.

“I’m given to understand that there are official constellations,” they continued, “maybe a few different sets of them. But no one had ever thought to teach them to me, and so I made them up for myself. I started with the brightest ones, the ones you can see even in the city.” They pointed to each of those, marking them out for Gon’s attention. “And then I moved on to the smaller ones, and pitted them against each other. It’s frivolous, of course, but I still remember most of them. And so,” they finished, settling a hand on their hip, “those are things I know, that no one else ever will.”

Gon’s thigh brushed against Hisoka’s shoulder as the younger hunter shifted his perch, settling a fraction of an inch closer. “Would you tell me?” Gon asked, peering over with dark and all-pervading eyes.

Hisoka had imagined that they would become accustomed to that look in time, immune to that expectant serenity, but each time it struck them like new. The shade and softness of those eyes, the pull as if some powerful emptiness desired to drag Hisoka deeper inside—it pierced, unaccustomed to being denied.

“Greedy thing,” Hisoka said, and seated themself cross-legged in the joint of the tree limb. They reached up and tugged Gon down, catching him in their arms and then depositing him between their legs. When Gon recovered from the shock, as soon as it became clear they weren’t intending to toss him over the edge, he settled in against Hisoka’s chest. The damp darkness of turned earth still clung to his knees. Hisoka trailed their fingers lightly over the grit and strangeness there.

“This one,” they said, leaning in close over Gon’s shoulder to point out at the sky beyond him, “is a garrote.”

As they marked out the path of stars, they pressed their cheek to the delicate curve of Gon’s ear. They would tell him a few. Just a few. Just enough to sate the hungry space that waited inside of him. Hisoka nosed the firm curve of his neck, and thought about nothing in particular as they named the star clusters one by one.

 

 

By the time they returned from their errand, Hisoka was thoroughly burning with a low half-stoked fire, a heat underneath each constellation of nerve endings. They walked a few steps behind Gon, watching the shift of his thighs under the rolled cuffs of his shorts. The length of smooth skin there looked positively edible. They could push the boy down and run their tongue over all of it—right now, they could drive him down against the leaves—

Gon halted, sharply, and looked over his shoulder. His eyes were bright, catching every flicker of light in the forest. “Right now?” he asked, bemused.

“Why not?”

“We’ve already taken longer than we were supposed to…” Gon said, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. Even as he said it he was shifting his weight, pushing his hip out invitingly, running a palm lightly down the side of his shorts. When he tipped his chin upwards, exposing the deliciously soft skin of his throat, Hisoka lunged.

They hit the ground in a flurry of leaves and cloth, as Hisoka ripped off Gon’s jacket and tossed it aside, shoving up the fabric of his shirt to expose the gently raised muscles and the peaked nipples beneath. Gon let out a breathy little noise of excitement, running his own hands up over Hisoka’s biceps. So eager, so charming. Hisoka licked and sucked and buried their teeth in every inch of delicate skin across Gon’s chest, while Gon wriggled against the pressure of the knee between his legs.

“Mmph,” Gon said, teeth digging into his own lips.

Hisoka had drawn back, just enough to murmur some smug observation, when the entire world went white with light and pain—force and flesh threw them back into something that crunched beneath them. Hisoka’s Ren slashed outward into an equally unforgiving aura even as they blinked blindness from their eyes. Splintered wood dug into their back. Nails had ripped through the skin of their neck. Their throat was pinned under the hard angle of the joint between another person's thumb and forefinger. As it usually did when their body outpaced their mind, the world reasserted itself in fragments. Belatedly, the returning sensation of their own limbs told them that they had speared something soft and wet on the ends of their own sharp fingertips.

“Ah,” they said, as sight began to roll back in. “Killua, your mother must have told you it’s impolite to sneak up on people.”

Killua, who had pinned them to an oak that was even now creaking dangerously under that pressure, spat blood onto Hisoka's hand—buried to the first knuckles in his left pectoral. The air between them crashed and sparked with the brute force of their auras.

“I think, Killua, that if you push any closer you won’t like what my nails will puncture,” Hisoka informed him, tone light with benign interest. “But as a student of anatomy yourself, I’m sure you know better than I.”

Killua’s eyes were cold and brutal, the blue of a rising tsunami. On a whim, Hisoka lifted their other hand from the shallow wound in Killua’s belly and dragged it across his cheek, leaving a smear of exquisitely dark blood over his pale skin. Now _that_ was a vision.

“Killua!” Gon called, the blurry outline of his shape rising from the ground. “Let them go please!”

Killua’s head snapped around. “Let them—” he said, “let them _go?_ This bastard just tried to—”

Gon put a firm hand on Killua’s shoulder. “Please,” he said again. “I’m sorry, this is all my fault.”

“ _Your_ fault?” Killua echoed, incised.

“I shouldn’t have taken so long in the woods, I made you worry.”

Gon tugged a couple times on Killua’s arm, until he finally gave in and retracted his claws, slowly lowering his hand. Hisoka lifted their fingers to their lips and licked up a long stripe of blood, watching intently. Killua half turned to Gon, but his eyes kept flashing back to Hisoka.

“Okay,” Killua said, in what was clearly attempting to be a calm tone. “Are you gonna tell me why you’re not freaking out right now? This fucking rapist—”

“Whoa!” Gon cut in, holding his hands up, “No, no, Hisoka wasn’t… That wasn’t what was happening. I wanted it.”

“You want—you _wanted_ that?”

Gon rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, his face going a fraction of a shade darker. “Yeah?”

Killua jabbed a finger in Hisoka’s direction. “Since when do you have any interest in that perverted _mess?”_

Hisoka took another long lick of salty blood, under the wilting force of Killua’s glare. In small doses, like shots of heavy liquor, it was delicious.

Gon screwed up his nose, a sure sign that he was doing some kind of math. “Well,” he said, “about a year ago? I’m not sure if the first time I jerked off thinking about it counts, because I—”

Killua made an awful distressed noised, waving his hands like he was warding off a barrage of physical blows. “Oh for the love of fuck do not tell me any more!”

“Anyways,” Gon shrugged, “we’ve had sex a few times now.”

Killua was covering his ears now. “I just told you not to tell me any more,” he whined.

“Hey, are you gonna be okay?” Gon asked him, looking worried. “You should sit down…”

“I can’t believe you didn’t _tell_ me,” Killua said, although with the way he was folded over it seemed as if he was addressing the ground.

“Sorry Killua,” Gon rocked back on his heels slightly. “We’ve been so busy since we met up, and you were out of contact for a long time before that, and it just didn’t seem that important.”

“How cold,” Hisoka commented, leaning back against the tree.

“You,” Killua snapped, “ _quiet_.”

Gon and Hisoka shared a look. Gon seemed genuinely uncertain, a rare event and quite interesting to watch. Hisoka shrugged, smiling faintly. They were very good at escalating conflict, but they had never put much effort into figuring out how to _deescalate_ it again. Particularly with someone who would know better than to be lied to.

“Um,” Gon said. “Are you mad at me?”

“I’m not— _mad_ ,” Killua said, sounding very mad indeed. “You just—you always do this, you cut me out of important things like it doesn’t matter what I—like I don’t matter to you.”

Gon slipped forward and pulled Killua upright, a hand on either shoulder. All at once, Killua looked utterly exhausted. “Of course you matter to me,” Gon said, “and I’m sorry if it seems like I cut you out of something important.”

“Gon is very self-centered,” Hisoka remarked, casually. Gon gave them an uncertain look over Killua’s shoulder, to which Hisoka simply raised a brow. “You don’t think about people unless they’re in front of you.”

Killua twitched. “Don’t talk bad about Gon,” he said, without looking over. “Aren’t you supposed to be on his side?”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Hey,” Gon said, patting Killua’s shoulders to get his attention again. “I won’t leave you out again. What can I do to make it up to you?”

Killua gave him a sidelong look, lips pursed. There was a vindictive glint in his prettily slanted eyes now. “Take Alluka shopping, when we get back to the association.”

Gon slumped, but managed a weak smile. “Alright,” he said, “if that’s what you want…”

“At least one whole afternoon,” Killua added, “and you carry her bags. She needs new summer clothes, she had a growth spurt this winter.”

Gon nodded. He already looked worn out.

Killua shoved a finger at his friend. “We’re not done talking about this,” he warned.

Hisoka glanced up at the sky, noting the shift and change of stars visible above them. “Not to interrupt such important communication,” they interrupted, “but we _are_ here to watch over that dull Lock person, aren’t we? Where is he?”

Killua and Gon snapped to attention at the same time. They shared a startled look, and then they darted off back towards camp together, leaving Hisoka behind. Such a hurry. Well, that was what happened when you took responsibility for civilians, wasn’t it?

Hisoka meandered back into camp on their own good time, and found everything more or less in order. Killua and Gon were in the middle of grilling Lock for a status report, so Hisoka detoured around them to inspect the tent that crouched like a resentful beast in the middle of the camp. It could probably have been fitting three people snugly before, but four—especially a fourth of their size—would be simply too much. Perhaps they should suggest putting Lock out to sleep on the grass like a pet dog, just to see Gon’s forehead wrinkle in that charming little way.

“Gon,” they called out, brightly.

Gon poked his head around Lock’s shoulder, but Killua cut in immediately. “No,” he said, “you are absolutely not staying in our tent.”

“Ah, would you really leave me out in the rain and the darkness all night?”

“If you didn’t want to sleep on the ground,” Killua snapped back, “you should have brought something for yourself.”

Gon was looking thoughtful though. “I guess we could switch out,” he said, “since someone should be on watch all night—”

“Forget it! I’m not sharing a tent with that creep.”

“It isn’t as if I was planning to take a _bite_ out of you,” Hisoka purred.

“I don’t know _what_ you’re planning! It’s weird enough that Gon isn’t worried about all this.”

The hunter in question gave the both of them a bemused look and started gathering up the leftover from their snaring venture that had clearly been sidelined in favor of checking up on the civilian. He did not appear enthused about getting involved again.

“Gon is quite aware of my priorities,” Hisoka said, turning their attention back to Killua.

“Oh, yeah, like the inside of his shorts? That’s a priority?”

“It certainly makes the list.”

“And you think I’m going to let you sleep within five feet of _either_ of us?”

“Are you feeling jealous, sweet Killua? Would you like to know where _you_ lie on my priorities list?”

Killua’s defensive aura positively crackled up; with his hackles raised he bore a remarkable resemblance to an angry cat. Gon shot Hisoka a serious look as he finished securing the coil of unused rope. “Stop flirting with Killua,” he said. “He’s not comfortable with it.”

Hisoka smiled widely as Gon passed them by, showing Killua the glittering array of pearly teeth, but said nothing else on the subject. Honestly, as pleasant as the prospect of pulling both those lovely bodies on top of themself in the intimate dark was, they hadn’t really planned to worry about tents or what-have-you at all when they started out that morning. It mattered very little to them what they slept on.

The three who had supplied the camp went about setting it up. Some travel food was passed around, and a fire stoked, and a perimeter investigated—Hisoka left all of that to the boys and their nervous little friend. The fire was a curious choice, but of course if their enemies could sense nen, then the shy blaze of a fire was merely a drop in a comparative ocean. In the odd inertia of the late evening, with the various auxiliary tasks completed, the three of them all seemed to stall out and hover, uncertain of what came next. Some were more subtle than others, but they all seemed to be glancing at Hisoka off and on.

Hisoka volunteered to take first watch. They received, for their generosity, one of Gon’s golden little smiles and one of Killua’s pitch black scowls. Under Killua’s scrutinizing eye, they reclined on a fallen log at the edge of camp and kicked one heel up over their knee, the very picture of indifference. Killua grit his teeth at them, bouncing a hand against his thigh.

“So you’re just gonna sit there,” he said.

“I might lay down in a little while,” Hisoka replied. They stretched their arms above their head, curving their torso back into a near C shape.

“And if someone approaches the camp from the north side?”

“Then I’ll get up,” Hisoka said, smiling over their shoulder.

Killua took a sharp look around himself, scanning the camp site for something—Gon, most likely—and then marched forward so that he stood, glaring, over Hisoka. The two of them must have looked like book ends: Hisoka with their neck craned back, peering upward; Killua with his hands on his hips, staring down.

“Are you really that arrogant, or do you just not care whether Gon lives or dies?”

Hisoka blinked up at him. “Oh Killu, don’t sell yourself short. You’re here too.”

“I’m not worried about _me_ ,” Killua snapped.

“Use your head, sweet. Do you think I would let anything happen that might permanently damage my precious toys?”

Killua drew back, his face souring into something almost like a pout. “So you’re arrogant then,” he said. “Don’t you remember that Gon was able to ambush you in the forest when he was _twelve?”_

Hisoka’s eyes fluttered shut. “How could I forget,” they murmured. “Gon is a remarkable talent, perhaps even unique. And I am much,” they added, opening one eye, “much faster than you seem to give me credit for.”

For a moment Killua looked about ready to escalate their argument into physical blows. The air around him crackled, electric and promising, as his blue eyes narrowed. But then he dropped all of it at once, the electricity and the aura and the tensing posture, and simply turned around.

“Do what you want,” he said, raising a hand as he walked away. “I can protect Gon just fine with or without your help.”

Hisoka watched him go—his jeans were slung low enough on his hips that every step revealed a flash of pale skin at the small of his back—and smiled. So protective… was it the nature of their mission, or the presence of Hisoka, or some third, more mysterious thing that made him this way? There were not so many things that Gon couldn’t protect himself from, these days.

Hisoka breathed out a slow, clouding breath, and listened for the tell-tale shift of a tent flap falling shut. Of course at first it would be too quiet to hear, but those two had a tendency to quickly forget their surroundings. Hisoka brushed a hand over their ear, coating the little fleshy mechanisms with gyo, and then waited. Quite possibly the nen wouldn’t even be necessary by the end of it, but they did so hate to miss the odd whisper.

There was the sound of velcro as Killua presumably pulled his shoes off, and then the expected flap. Killua said: “So.”

Gon, slightly more muffled—probably pulling his shirt off—said: “Where’s Lock?”

“Outside. Look, Gon, are you sure about this... stuff? I mean—Hisoka? Really?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Gon said, “You don’t need to worry so much.”

“Of course I need to worry! If I don’t worry about you then who will? You’re clearly not doing it.”

“Aw, Killua, you sound like Aunt Mito.”

Outside, in the darkness at the edge of the camp, Hisoka smirked and settled back more comfortably.

“I’m not your _mom!_ I’m only asking you because I really don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

“What’s there to think through? I like Hisoka. Hisoka likes me.”

“Okay, first of all, I don’t know _how_ you can like them. They’re weird and they stir up trouble everywhere they go. Second of all, I don’t like that they’re still hitting on me. If they’re really with you they should have stopped that!”

Gon made a thoughtful, humming sound, faint even in Hisoka’s ears. “It’s not like that,” he said, after a moment. “Hisoka wouldn’t ask me to stop seeing other people any more than they would ask me to stop fighting other people. And I don’t mind if they don’t mind.”

Killua groaned, a heavy and complicated noise. “It’s even not that they’re entirely bad looking under that makeup, it’s just—”

“I like it when they do the winged eyeliner. It looks nice.”  

“It’s _just,_ people like them don’t come around. You've gotta realize that.”

“...But you came around.”

“Because I wanted to! Because it was important to me! Do you think _anything_ is important to them?”

There was quiet. Hisoka imagined Gon making one of his sympathetic but disappointed faces. Then, less pleasantly, they imagined him making a thoughtful and uneasy face. Either way, he said nothing at all.

“You’re a lot stronger now than you were when you were twelve,” Killua added, darkly. “Hisoka is only interested in one thing, and we both know what that is.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

Killua sighed. “I should never have left you in the first place. I should have taken you with us after I found Alluka.”

Hisoka switched off the gyo with a mental flick. As interesting as it usually was to hear oneself being discussed, they found that they would rather not hear the rest.  

 

 

Late into the evening, when the fire had burned down to wary embers behind them, Lock came out to the edge of the camp and took a seat on the ground a few steps away from Hisoka. There was plenty of room beside them on the log, of course, but they would have been terribly surprised if either of the men here, aside from Gon, were bold enough to try it. Hesitantly, Lock offered them a heavy earthenware cup of something that steamed.

“Here,” he said, without meeting Hisoka’s eye. “I made a cup for you, if you want some.”

Hisoka didn’t move. “A cup of what?” they asked, pleasantly.

“Er. Tea. There’s some herbs that grow around here that you can… well anyways, Killua said it was passable.”

Hisoka opened a palm and allowed Lock to place his cup there with trembling fingers. Hisoka, of course, did not possess Killua’s immunity to poisons, enviable though it was. There was no telling whether that meant it was safe to drink or not. They were not at all certain that Killua’s affection for Gon would be sufficient for him to prevent someone from poisoning Gon’s lover—if he was anything like his brother, perhaps it would be all more reason to facilitate such a thing.

“That’s very generous of you,” Hisoka said, tracing one nail around the rim of the cup. It keened a faint, high whine.

“Um,” Lock said, wincing. “It’s no trouble. I’m too nervous to sleep, and there’s plenty of water.”

“I shouldn’t think that you’d be nervous about anything,” Hisoka remarked, “given where you come from.”

Lock froze, and then with the upmost caution, drew back into himself. It had certainly been a secret, then. He stared at Hisoka for a long moment, and then nodded vaguely to himself.

“True. I’m from Meteor City,” Lock said, rolling his cuff back, “as you probably guessed by now. Raised by the church.”

Hisoka glanced over the gothic embellishment of an equal-armed cross, confirming their earlier hypothesis. More orthodox than Chrollo’s delightfully ostentatious ink, but heavier and darker against the skin. A traditionalist. Probably still in the faith, despite the years and distance.

“When I was graduating, everybody wanted the wrists done,” Lock said, cradling his forearm in his hand. “I wish I hadn’t. It’s too hard to hide, and it hurt so badly I almost passed out. I’m not good with pain, you know? That’s why I just do office work now.”

Hisoka glanced up. Church boys did not simply leave Meteor City to work in benign office jobs. And the absence of nen they had sensed before, they were certain now, was not a lack thereof. “But you didn’t always,” they observed. “What were you? An assassin?”

Lock let out a little laugh that only seemed to be covering for the flinch that tightened his abdomen. “Gon said the same thing. All of you guys are really observant.”

Hisoka noted that it was neither a confirmation nor a denial, and then let the line of questioning go. Lock was visibly pondering something else, lip twisted between his teeth.

“They’re really something, those two,” he said, after a long moment. “They took one look at me and let me know they were gonna take care of me. Can you imagine? Barely even eighteen and they’re gonna take care of _me_.”

Hisoka lifted an eyebrow at him.

“I know,” Lock muttered, hunching up over himself all at once. “That doesn’t speak too highly of me, does it? I bet you and I are about the same age. And, uh, look at _you.”_

“Ten slows aging,” Hisoka remarked. “I’m probably older than you think I am.”

Lock pulled a slightly stricken face and took a hasty sip of his own tea, then choked on that and had to spit the whole mouthful out. He wiped his mouth on the back of his arm, spluttering softly.  

“Why are you telling me all this?” Hisoka asked, after the wet noises had died down.

“Well,” Lock said, pausing with his mouth against his sleeve. “You know them pretty well, don’t you?”

"More than some... others."

“I’ve got a sister,” Lock said, “back in Meteor City. I’ve got to get back to her, before—well, there’s a lot of people who aren’t so fond of the prison staff, if you know what I mean.”

“But you worked in an office,” Hisoka reminded him, sitting back. “Surely no one would care about _you?”_

Lock tapped his fingers rapidly against the cup, wave after wave of dull little taps. “It’s—how much do you know about Meteor?”

“Oh, a fair bit.”

“Okay, then you probably know that they don’t like the Hunter’s Association much. I’m a—I’m a traitor, that makes me a person of interest to any inmates who come from there too.”

Hisoka considered this. They supposed, upon reflection, that it was probable for the city’s low grade animosity to ferment and explode within the confines of an Association owned prison. Lock seemed a bit over-cautious though. Hisoka sighed and took a sip from their cup of tea. These low-powered types were dreadfully dull and skittish. On the other hand, it would explain Wintres' fixation on the party.

“So you want to know if Gon and Killua can really protect you,” they concluded.

“Er. Yes.”

“I haven’t seen Killua in action, but he comes from _impeccable_ stock. I’m certain he’s more than capable. Gon…” Hisoka took another sip, “ah, Gon. Did he give you his word?”

Lock nodded.

“Then he'll keep it. That boy can no more break a promise than a river can flow uphill.”

Lock glanced over his shoulder. His eyes, previously wary and dull, took on a kind of soft keenness that seemed to pierce the very darkness of the night. It was as if he sharpened into focus all at once, unapologetically fond. “He’s really something,” Lock repeated.

Unguarded as he was, it was the work of a glance to take the man apart—his affection, his wonder, his uncertainty. The gift of kindness in an unkind world had spun him off his axel and left him drifting, out of alignment, in unfamiliar space. When he turned back to Hisoka, the yearning was raw and exposed in every motion of his body.

“You know, as soon as he met me, he took my face in his hands like—” Lock paused, mid-way through the motion of reaching for Hisoka, and then slammed his palms back onto his thighs, visibly mortified. “Um. He—he looked at me, really hard, and he said, ‘do you have a sister?’”

Hisoka said nothing. They were too busy watching the way Lock’s hands moved in quick little stuttering flurries.

“So I said, yes, but she lives in another city—and he says, oh, is she an escort?” Lock pressed an open palm to his mouth, looking at nothing in particular. “He says he knows my sister! He met her while he was there for a day. One day, can you _believe_ that? And he remembers her. And he recognizes me. I’ve never met a person who cared so much—who—And he tells me he’s going to make sure I see her again—”

Hisoka watched as Lock curled up into himself, tea discarded and forgotten on the ground, growing cold. Hisoka was growing cold too. Was this how Gon did it? Was this how his magic worked, pressing on the point of weakness until the whole caved like rotten fruit?

“I’m sorry,” Lock said, at last, unfolding himself vertebrae by vertebrae. “You didn’t need to know any of that. I’ll let you get back to your watch now.”

Hisoka offered him the half-finished tea, watching as he took it back with steady fingers.

“It seems to me,” they said, “you already believed Gon could do what he promised. You didn’t need to come talk to me.”

Lock pulled the cup in close to his chest. “I’m afraid I did,” he said, with a note of apology that he swallowed down as he turned and left. His cup remained, entirely forgotten, amidst the leaves and unfolding grass. Hisoka eyed it for a moment, and then picked it up, examining its contents. Even as they ran a finger around its rim, their mind was seething. Were they any different from Lock, really? Reduced to licking their wounds at the first touch of kindness, bending helplessly under a single friendly overture? Pitiful, _pitiable._

They had been right to worry at the start—a manipulator knows manipulation. Perhaps it had all been a bid for survival. Take the dangerous thing and teach it to heel. What a clever boy.

It was a perfectly pretty night, but there was too much coldness inside of Hisoka to properly appreciate it.

 

 

Dawn came while Hisoka was dozing in the dying heat of the night’s fire. They had been dreaming of snow, for no reason at all, and woke with phantom aches all down the length of their arms. In the dusty pink light of dawn, Gon was stretching at the edge of camp, coming up from the last watch shift of the night. He had locked his fingers above his head and pushed himself upwards, as if he were trying to hold the sky in place, or perhaps to keep back the mist in the treetops that was rolling down towards him slowly. Hisoka watched through slitted eyes while he finished bending the kinks out of his lovely form and slipped back into the camp. His boots came to a stop among the wet leaves, next to where Hisoka had pillowed their head in their arm to doze.

“Hey,” he whispered. Hisoka allowed their eyes to fall entirely shut, feigning sleep. Gon hovered silently for a moment, his boots shifting softly in the leaves, and then he knelt there. Hisoka felt the thump of his knee meeting earth. There was a gentle brush of skin against their cheek, and then the warm wetness of breath. “Wake up,” Gon whispered, his lips leaving tingling trails over flesh grown cold with passing night.

Hisoka cracked one eye open. There was something irresistible about Gon’s presence, in the quiet closeness of the morning. The world seemed empty but for the two of them. Even the coldness in Hisoka’s muscles seemed to thaw at his first glancing touch.

“You _are_ awake!” Gon said, pleased and leaning in still closer.

Hisoka turned their head just so, lifted up just enough to press their lips against Gon’s. “It would seem so,” they said, as they fell back against the crook of their arm.

“Come help me clear away the fire,” Gon said, “before Killua wakes up.”

The morning rose pink and thick with fog, over the remains of the campfire and the tent as it came down, over the bags as they packed and zipped them, and over Hisoka who never quite managed to warm up again. They watched Gon at a half-distance, taking apart every little movement as if they had never seen him before. His brightness, his energy. The way he absently twirled the tent pole over his fingers like a majorette. They hadn’t only imagined the purity there; the honesty was as real as it ever had been. They had never before considered that the best way to hide calculating intentions might be to never worry about hiding them at all.

Hisoka lifted the second travel bag without needing to be asked.

They were deep into the morning’s journey, low in a valley that might have become a swamp in the spring, when Gon first looked up into the canopy and sniffed, his brows furrowing. The mist between the leaves left the sky a hollow white, untroubled by anything above the level of those branches.

“Something interesting?” Hisoka inquired, expecting to be shortly educated on some sort of thrush or cardinal.

“Huh?” Gon said, turning to them. “You don’t feel it?”

Hisoka’s interest sharpened. They felt for their aura—which they rarely did outside of combat—and found nothing. They flexed their Hatsu and got no results. It was as if they were in a state of Ten, regardless of their will. If it had gone, it must have gone slowly, over the length of hours, or they would have noticed the change immediately.

“Well this is unusual,” they murmured.

Gon’s eyes had gone wide, a few steps away. “I’ll call Killua—”

“Don’t bother,” Hisoka said, turning away, “he’ll be back soon enough. I’m sure he’s run into our pursuers.”

With nen or without, Hisoka was devilishly fast—they snapped their arm out and caught Lock by the throat, their hand nearly large enough to encircle the full circumference there. Lock jerked back under their grip, in vain.

“So,” Hisoka said, tilting their head, “what precisely do I have to look forward to next?”

“Hisoka!” Gon shouted, “What are you _doing?”_

“I assume it was in the tea,” Hisoka said, ignoring him. “Am I right?”

Lock clutched at the hand around his throat. “Y-yes,” he managed, “it’s not—this is all it does. They asked me to take you out of the fight.”

“They?”

“But you and Gon—” he made a helpless little throaty noise, possibly because Hisoka’s fist had just closed tighter, “—you’re important to him, so I couldn’t—”

“Who is _they?_ ”

Lock looked down at the arm that held him in place, as if he could feel the impending squeeze coming, and then he promptly disappeared. Or rather, he displaced. Hisoka’s hand closed around nothing but air. A few feet away, there was Lock all at once, stumbling backwards. He clutched at his own throat, feet skidding on damp ground.

Hisoka licked their lips. “What a useful talent for an assassin,” they remarked. “How _did_ you do that?”

“Lock,” Gon said, “I don’t understand. We’re friends, why would you hurt Hisoka?”

“I didn’t hurt anyone!” Lock shouted. Lock displaced again, reappearing several feet back on the same path they had been traveling, breathing heavily. “You said he could do it,” he told Hisoka, his eyes wide and frightened like an animal’s. “You said they’d be able to. I believe it. I just had to take you out, that’s all she said—if you’re not in the fight, they’ll leave my sister out of it.”

"Please," Gon said, "I don't understand why-"

Lock recoiled, blinking out of existence again. In the breath of a second, he was at the top of the hill. “Everything will be fine! Just do what you came here to do and everything will be fine!”

And then he was gone entirely—or, more probably, displaced to a distance great enough to be beyond their sight. Hisoka shot Gon a look, curious as to how he was handling the betrayal.

“No, I think I do understand…” Gon muttered, his attention fixed on the shadows of the forest where Lock had been. “Did he talk to you last night?”

“Mhhm.”

Gon was quiet for a long moment. Watching the thoughts swirl through him was like watching shoals of fish beneath the placid surface of a lake. At last, he shrugged off his bag and set down his fishing rod in the underbrush.

“That was cowardly,” he announced. “But sometimes there are things more important than bravery. And if he believes in me, then it’s not as if he’s left me to die here. I said I would help him. Nothing has changed.”

“That’s generous of you,” Hisoka said, lifting a brow.

Deep in the woods ahead of them, the first sounds of wood cracking had begun to reach them.

Gon turned his head back to look at Hisoka. “Not really,” he said. “He _is_ my friend.”

A cloud of birds erupted into the sky far above their line of sight, filling the air with shrill cries and the heavy beating of wings.

Killua arrived first, in a burst of ozone and the sound of thunder. The air around him crackled with nen, Hisoka was certain, but they were no longer able to feel its presence against their aura. Killua skidded to a stop, exchanged fast urgent words with Gon—the distant splintering of wood all but drowned him out—and then his eyes settled on Hisoka. Hisoka opened themself up for inspection, lifting their hands from their sides. Killua looked down, and then back up. There was a moment of perfect understanding between their mismatched gazes: possibilities, impossibilities, priorities.

"You'll take care of yourself first," Killua said. It wasn't much of a question.

"Naturally."

At the top of the hill, the air was suddenly full of wood suspended in thousands of tiny slivers—they hung like a photograph of rain, halted effortlessly in their explosion. In the cloud of them, the dark shape of Wintres materialized. At her back there were indistinct figures, but they lurked with the telltale hesitation of underlings. She stepped through the cloud, batting splinters out of her way with broad, careless motions. One shoulder had shrugged free from the sleeve of her prison jumpsuit, like an outer kimono. And then, through the suddenly plummeting spray of shattered wood, she dashed down towards them at the same moment that her muscle lunged for Killua and Gon. The two hunters scrambled in opposite directions, retreated back under that first assault.

"So," Wintres said, as she came to a sudden halt a few feet in front of Hisoka, just beyond striking distance. "You're not dead, after all."

Hisoka smiled an unfriendly smile and said nothing.

Her lips turned down, but there was a vague nostalgic fondness in the way she settled back on her heels. "That little rat is as short on guts as ever. Never could  just-" she mimed the shape of a rifle, "-pull the trigger." 

"I thought you might have had history," Hisoka said. "His concerns about prisoners from Meteor seemed a bit too generic to inspire that level of anxiety in a former assassin."

 _"Assassin,"_ she snorted. "If you could call him that. But I bet he didn't tell you he was _our_ assassin," Wintres continued, "and I bet he didn't tell you how he got that cushy little position with the Hunters' organization, either."

Arrogance—with a leading quip like that, it was child's play to deduce that Lock had simply sold out his comrades in exchange for amnesty and a steady salary with the organization. That meant that Wintres didn't particularly care what they knew, and that implied that she did not expect them to leave this forest, and _that_ was a mistake.

"You all," she said, turning her attention to the boys as well now, "came here to hunt us, hmm? But here we are, hunting you. I think that's a good note to go out on, don't you?"

Under the shadow of a swinging fist, Killua blurred into nothing. All at once Wintres was gone as well, her path splitting the air only a fraction of a second before his. Where Killua broke his momentum there were flashes of light and heat, and blackened pits in the dirt and the tree trunks. The goons had come together now, with their targets whittled down to just the one, clumsy and belated compared to their swift mistress but heavy enough with swinging power that they drove Gon backwards under their concerted effort. The ground rattled. The air sparked. Gon and the heavyhitters pounded the earth like a massive drumbeat; around and above them, Killua and Wintres clashed like a frantic melody.

Hisoka watched all of this without lifting a finger, although it would have been a good fight. They considered it for a moment, and felt a quick-dying flicker of real envy pass through them, as Wintres reappeared in a gale of hoarse laughter only a little ways above them. It would have been a sweet thing. But they had never been one to linger on unpleasant emotions, or disappointment, and so after the worst pulse of unhappiness had passed through them, they closed up what remained and settled back to watch. Gon was, at least, as lovely in motion as ever.

Wintres' goons moved with the practiced smoothness of a longtime team, passing their attacks back and forth between them like twins sharing a sentence. A shield type manipulator and a strike type emitter, when one went high the other went low—Gon danced between them, ducked close to the ground and then leapt, twisted and lunged, using the full weight of his body again and again as a missile.

And then Killua was at his side, in a crack of lighting, and the stomach of the emitter burst into a mist of pink and red gristle around Wintres's arm as she plunged her palm through it. The droplets hung between them—her face pale with belated understanding, Killua's whole body braced for the carnage. She withdrew her hand, slowly. The suspended gore slumped to the earth. There was a terrible moment of stillness, and then she tore headfirst through the sagging mountain of her dead minion's flesh, in a dive that brought her deadly hands right to Killua's face. Almost too late, caught off guard by the brutality of the attack, he blocked her slashing nails with his own hands. The force of the blow ripped him off his feet, blurred his shape from all human sight, and left only a void of silence in his wake, until the sound of a tree crashing in the distance finally reached them. 

"I've had Seto since he left Meteor," Wintres snarled, nose wrinkling like a wolf's, in the direction Killua had been thrown. She leapt forward again, too fast for even Gon at such proximity, and caught him with both hands. "Let's see how you like it," she said, her eyes passing right through Gon's struggling form.

Hisoka knew, as all hunters knew, that in the moment before your death time slowed to an incredible rate, leaving space for the mind to clamber upwards towards true genius—just enough to taste immortality, before mortality reasserted itself. As Wintres narrowed her wild eyes, time slowed around Hisoka.

 _Peculiar,_ they thought, _since I'm in no observable danger._

Gon's hands, clutching at Wintres' wrist, looked so familiar. The mist of the forest, not quite dispelled from the ravine below them, the curve of the knuckles, even the heaviness of the air itself: Hisoka felt themself standing once again in the swamp of the hunter exam, their fist effortlessly encircling Gon's neck.

Little good it had done him to win Hisoka over, after all. Perhaps he should have spent his efforts on Wintres instead.

And at the same time Hisoka was thinking this, they were rising from their observant slouch, pressing the heel of their sole against the tree behind them.

To die here, at the hand of what was only a modest and passing entertainment—to die at the hand of a stranger, with so many goals yet unaccomplished, never to taste the sweetness of certain heavy-hanging fruits—was an unacceptable fate. That was why Hisoka hung back.

Their hand pressed into the smoothness of bark, which crunched and gave out under the pressure of their body drawing back against it.

To interfere now would be tantamount to accepting that they had been tamed and turned like a dog, to heel, by this child. There was nothing to be gained here except Gon's continued survival, at enormous rates of risk. To go would be unlike them. To bother justifying it would be still more so.  

Hisoka coiled and _sprang._

 

 

Forests are never entirely quiet, even when they are empty of people. The toads croak in the river beds, the birds call, the trees murmur to each other high above human heads. And still, for a moment, as Killua flashed into being again, there was a perfect silence. Red glinted, thick and elegant, over Hisoka's nails, as they held them up to the midmorning light.

"The other one is yours," they said, nodding to the cringing hulk of meat that had been Wintres' manipulator. "It seemed rude to take both of your opponents out from underneath you."

"I don't know what you expect _me_ to do with him, I don't get off on killing people the way you do." Killua took an uncertain step forward. His gaze dragged inevitably down to the savaged corpse of Wintres, whose mouth was cracked open in a silent syllable of alarm. "Did... _you...?"_

Hisoka turned from him and leant down over Gon, extending one blood-slicked hand in patient offering. Gon's expression was blankly fixed on the corpse, and for a moment Hisoka thought they were about to be lectured about interfering again. They resigned themselves to take their hand back empty, fingers already starting to curl closed, but then Gon lifted his chin, and the wind itself seemed to draw in its breath. The smile was so soft. It ran so deep that it echoed down through every inch of blood and bone, and Hisoka froze, blinking against its brightness.

"That was reckless," Gon said. 

"...I assure you," Hisoka replied, "I had thought it all out thoroughly before getting involved." 

Gon's fingers slid over theirs, clasping them blood and all. Hisoka lifted him to his feet. "Next time," he said, "you won't need to get involved. I'll get stronger."

Hisoka's lips twitched, caught between a flush of pleasant desire and an unfamiliar discontent—like mist against the skin, cool and full of directionless yearning. It occurred to them that the soft suddenness of this smile and this moment, of the blood made harmless between their clasped fingers, was itself a fleeting and irrecoverable joy. The single bloom lay already plucked in their hand.

They pressed a kiss to Gon's mouth, gentle and deep, catching his lower lip between their teeth as they drew back. "I know you will," they said.

Killua cleared his throat loudly, with a lot of phlegm, until Gon finally shook the softness from his eyes and turned, laughing, to his friend. Hisoka missed that look the moment it was gone—it was unlike anything that had ever been turned on them before, warm and fond and content. Hisoka watched him as he picked his way around corpses to reassure his friend, carelessly stomping in pools of cooling blood even as he went.

If I'm being manipulated, they thought, then I suppose I've accepted it freely.

 

 

The border guard was still an hour or two's walk from there, where Gon's freshly packed graves were accumulating curious carrion birds. Killlua hung back with Lock, who had been retrieved from a little ways away after the fight, and who was deemed too shaken up to carry anything. Hisoka was surprised to see Killua had taken his bag from him with a kind of reserved concern, as easily as if nothing had changed between them.

The curious coldness remained in Hisoka's joints for the time being, presumably a side effect of last night's poison rather than the psychosomatic affliction that they had originally taken it for. Almost certainly Lock could clarify that, but as Killua reappeared with the man practically cradled in his arms, Gon had looked at Hisoka and pressed a finger to his lips. _Secret,_ that finger said. Hisoka, who was well accustomed to withholding information sometimes simply for the fun of it, obliged without argument. It wasn't until they had gone a long way from that place that they slipped closer to Gon, intent on questioning.

Behind them Killua was fussing over another bout of Lock's shaking, much too distracted to pay any attention to a quiet conversation up ahead.

"It's unlike you to keep secrets," Hisoka remarked, lightly. 

Gon kept a passable poker face, compared to his usual standard. It was still fairly transparent. "I don't think it's our place to tell Killua," he said. "Lock has to do it for himself."

Hisoka lifted a brow. "But if he had been there, Killua would have seen it first hand. Surely it's no different."

Gon pursed his lips. "I can't explain it," he said, at last, "it's just a feeling. Killua will take the betrayal hard, but if Lock tells him all on his own, that will be a kind of apology. Killua really likes him," Gon added, glancing over his shoulder briefly. His smile was fond, knowing. "Killua says I can't go a week without meeting someone new, but Killua is the one who really puts the effort into making friends. I think he secretly collects them. He's carrying a postcard from Ikalgo right now, did you know? Ikalgo is an octopus, but he's gotten pretty good with an ink brush."

For a moment, Hisoka thought only of Illumi's lovely, cold features. His pretty, empty eyes. How he had once spoken in self-satisfied, almost sweet tones of his little brother—the first hint of anything human Hisoka had ever heard in his voice, although by then it was their third or fourth meeting. Illumi was beautiful, deadly, immensely talented, and barely alive in any meaningful way. Hisoka had always admired that beauty, but compared to the brightness and complexity of Killua, inarguably, that icy elegance paled.

"He is a curious one," they murmured.

"What about you?" Gon asked, looking up now.

"Me? What do you mean?"

Gon shifted his bag a little higher on his shoulder. "You're not going to try and get revenge on Lock or anything, are you?" he asked. "Obviously you haven't so far, but I guess you could be waiting for the right time."

Hisoka flipped a hand. "I don't hold grudges," they said. "And I don't concern myself with assassins that start to shake at the sight of blood. All his comrades are dead, anyhow—he's toothless and uninteresting alone."

Gon nodded, as if he had half suspected and simply wanted to hear it spoken out loud. The air seemed somehow fresher now, in the wake of carnage, the sun brighter between the gaps of the canopy.

“Where will you go now?” Gon said, at the same that Hisoka began to ask, “What are your plans—?”

They blinked at each other for an uncertain moment. Hisoka looked away, towards the glowing greenness of the path ahead.

“The majority of the inmates are still free, I imagine,” they said. “And I haven’t gotten a chance to properly fight anyone yet. It would be a waste to leave now.”

“I was thinking about going back in, too,” Gon said, “I’m sure there’s more I can do.”

 _We could go together_ , Hisoka thought but did not say. They hesitated at the directness. It would be too strange to say to the boy, _I would like to stay by your side_ , without irony or agenda. It seemed different now than it had the day before, when Hisoka had casually suggested they continue together. It seemed heavier, somehow.

Neither of them said anything for a moment, and Hisoka imagined the unspoken offer hanging tenuously between them, too delicate to touch—and then Gon promptly snatched it from the air with his usual disregard for the delicacies of conversation.

“I don’t mind if you stay with me,” Gon said, breaking into another smile, “but let me fight my own battles from here on, okay?”

That heavy something broke open in Hisoka all at once. Relief, perhaps. “Ah,” Hisoka said, “and I had thought I was off the hook for that.”

Gon’s face turned bright with warning, a toothy smile that promised There Would Be Words. Hisoka was surprised to find themself discomfited at the sight of it, perhaps even—apprehensive?

When they at last arrived at the border station, the guards there received the party with eyes the size of dinner plates, their hands shaking on the barrels of their guns. Hisoka absently picked flakes of dried blood and viscera from their skin as Gon presented the various licenses and id cards. One of them couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Hisoka’s rust-covered nails. Hisoka blew him a kiss. After that, the guards didn’t seem eager to detain them at the station.

Outside again, on what was technically different land but in reality precisely the same as the land ten feet away, Killua slapped his palms together.

“I want to see Lock to the nearest city,” he announced. “He shouldn’t be alone in the state he’s in. I’ll get him a hotel room and come back to meet up with you.”

Lock, for his part, still looked green with guilt and exhaustion. Gon nodded and pulled the man aside, presumably to give him an unsubtle nudge in the right direction. Killua turned back to Hisoka.

“I assume you’re going back in with him,” he said, a hint of wariness in his otherwise dismissive tone.

“Do you have some objection?” Hisoka asked, mildly.

It surprised them again, how Killua was so very different from his brother. The easy rise and downturn of the smirk, the flickers of emotion that shifted the fall of his lids ever so slightly—there was a life inside him that cast its shadows on the surface of all his expressions. And they had only just been thinking yesterday how similar the two siblings were. 

“I don’t trust you,” Killua said, at last, “I’d be crazy to trust you.”

Hisoka shrugged. True.

“But,” Killua went on, glancing away, “what you did earlier, that wasn’t fake. I don’t think anyone would take those kinds of risks on a whim.”

“Of course it was a whim,” Hisoka said, tilting their head. “It always is.”

Killua hissed over his teeth, tucking his arms up behind his head. “You say that,” he muttered, “but—maybe there’s something in you that’s genuine. I’m gonna choose to believe, for the time being. For Gon’s sake, if nothing else.”

Coldness flooded Hisoka’s joints again, although the day was growing ever hotter and even now Lock’s poison was beginning to recede in their veins. They smiled, pushing down the sensation. “I feel a ‘but’ coming,” they remarked lightly.

Killua glanced up at them—their heights were only marginally unequal, but Killua’s casual slouch put him a bit lower—and lifted one hand from his neck. Deliberately, he brought the tip of his index finger down to rest against Hisoka’s chest.

“If you take my friend’s heart,” he said, one eye open and alight with cruel promises, “maybe I should take yours, too?”

The nail was sharp. Inhumanly sharp. The hard pale shell of it caught sunlight like a dagger. “Oh Killua,” they breathed, “you _are_ the charmer.”

Killua sighed, drew his hand back to himself. “Of course threats don’t work on a person like you,” he said. “Still, if you hurt him I’ll make you regret it, one way or another.”

“Consider me warned,” Hisoka replied.

Killua turned and left, rejoining his friends a little ways away. For a moment, Hisoka was struck with the desire to show Illumi how much his brother had grown. They looked over from the pale young man to Gon, sun-dark and ever glowing, and felt as if they could almost understand the way that Gon’s light moved—the way that it drew life up through the heavy blanket of snow and towards the promise of sky.

They flexed their fingers, absently calling for the aura that was only just beginning to build strength again. If Killua had been so affected, who came from the coldest and most lifeless of stock; if Lock had been affected, who had only known the boy for a handful of days—

“Hisoka!” Gon called, waving a hand above his head.

Hisoka dropped their fist. “Hmm?”

“Let’s go!” Gon said, already bouncing on his heels in anticipation. “Race me! First one back to the gravesite gets a kiss!”

“Ah,” Hisoka said, lips quirking upwards of their own accord, “that doesn’t seem like much of a prize, if there’s a kiss either way.”

But they were already gone, disappearing into the arms of the forest, before Gon could open his mouth to retort. 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically this is where the "Cosmopolitan" oneshot slots into continuity, if you're a stickler for reading things in order (like I am). That installment is [ here ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7343575).


	6. Moscato (Redux)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You knew this day was coming, didn't you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly written while listening to [ this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWJHK0JT_Xc) and some of the action to [ this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CCe0Sa_6T0)  
> @Togashi's new chapters, why you gotta play me like that

On the day that Hisoka decided Gon had finally come of age, they stood in the mirror of their hotel room and carefully clipped their earrings into place. They were going to look good for this, and they were going to do it with _style._

The little charms swung like pendulums as they pulled on suede boots, smoothed the painstakingly arranged locks of red hair—red like split flesh, red like it had been when they first met Gon, all those years ago. Next came the eyeliner, in neat thin arcs. Subtle, they thought; inviting. Maybe something for the lips? Gon already knew how beautiful they were, but it never hurt to furnish a reminder.

A week ago they had received a call from Illumi telling them that Ging Freecs' expedition had returned, at last. That hadn't been the reason for the call, but the moment he relayed that detail, everything else grew dim and pale. Ging's ship, the ship that had left the year before, taking Gon Freecs along with it into distant waters, was due to dock in a week's time. They had agreed easily to meet with Illumi, after that. The rendezvous was in a bistro along the wealthy strip of Zabban, where Hisoka selected a table in the sunshine so that they could watch the pedestrians come and go.

"Why do you look so grim?" Illumi had asked them, flicking a strand of silken hair over his shoulder.

They had been seated under the flowering shade of the pavilion while they waited for him, sipping moscato in near silence. Hisoka was early, which they almost never were—but the air outside had been sweet and the hotel room gratingly bare, and Hisoka had preferred not to linger in the darkness. They had looked up from their drink to find Illumi standing much closer than expected. Had they drifted away completely for a few moments there?

“Grim?” Hisoka asked, with a coy smile. “Me?”

Illumi slid the chair out from the other side of the table, dragging a vicious groan of protest from all four metal legs as they scraped across the concrete. He didn’t seem to notice the sound at all, unblinking as he tugged it a few more torturous inches and then finally took a seat.

“Please, Illumi,” Hisoka said, “have mercy on my ears. I’m delicate, you know.”

“No you’re not,” Illumi said. He gestured for the waiter, a carelessly commanding little flick of the fingers—a treat to watch, the way the wait staff just tumbled over itself to comply. It was something in the breeding, no doubt, a lifetime of receiving unconditional, unhesitating service. It would be injustice to call it arrogance. Arrogance itself was a self-conscious, pitiful child in comparison to Illumi Zoldyck’s regal certitude.

“What are you drinking?” Illumi asked them, pausing in his order to peer back at his companion.

“Hm?” Hisoka glanced down at their drink, as if they needed to be reminded. “Moscato. They have a pink that you’d absolutely hate.”

“And a scotch,” Illumi finished, turning to the waiter once more. “On the rocks. Hisoka, how you stand to drink that sugar water is beyond me.”

The glass was tapered elegantly, rising like the world tree from Hisoka’s cradling fingers. Pink, like flowers. Pink, like blood under delicate flesh. Like bruised sclera. “Sweetness has its time,” Hisoka replied, glancing up from it, “and place.”

“Now you’re deliberately being obscure,” Illumi said. He crossed his arms over his chest, probably studying Hisoka, although it was always a little difficult to tell what he was thinking about at any given time.

“Did you only come here to criticize me?” Hisoka asked, pouting into their drink.

“This is because of Gon,” Illumi guessed. “You only ever get that serious look when it has to do with one of your reckless conquests.”

“Reckless?”

“Furthermore,” Illumi said, as if he hadn’t heard, “you expressed no interest in coming to this city until I mentioned him. I still doubt that you’re interested in helping me, although the fact that I’m here at all testifies to my willingness to compromise.”

“I would never turn down a friend in need,” Hisoka said, mostly for the joy of seeing Illumi’s unflappable expression flinch at the casual insinuation that they might be, perhaps, more than very familiar acquaintances. Any emotion on that lovely, blank canvas was a spectacle to behold. But then the pleasure soured itself suddenly, from the root, nearly cracking Hisoka’s winning smile. Illumi, as cold and cruel as ever, was unchanged. Hisoka licked traces of pink wine from their lips, thinking of Gon’s endless, easy confessions.

“Oh,” Illumi said. “You’re doing it again. That’s very unusual.”

Hisoka sat back in their chair. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about,” they lied.

“I assume you’re intending to fight him now,” Illumi said. He lifted the glass from the tray that appeared at his elbow, not once sparing a glance for the waiter who had carried it there. “He’s about as strong now as Chrollo was when you chased him, and you have nothing else on your plate at the moment—you’ve never been one to miss an opening.”

“I _was_ thinking about looking in on him,” Hisoka admitted, “to see if he’s as strong as you said. You know, you’re unusually _focused_ in this topic. Why the sudden interest in my love life?”

“Your…” Illumi’s lips turned down as if he had found a dead animal on his doorstep, “… _love life_ is of no interest to me. I’ll admit I’m curious as to how this plays out. Gon took Killu away from us. If possible, I would like to see you kill him.”

“Oh, you’re so _cold_ ,” Hisoka sighed, “you could have killed him at any point in the last six years if you had half a mind to.”

“Assassins do not kill for free,” Illumi replied, primly. “And anyways, it wouldn’t have done me any good. Killu is very stubborn, especially now that he has that _thing_ with him.”

“That’s my favorite trait of yours, that delicious hypocrisy.”

Illumi didn’t deign to validate that comment with a response. Instead, he took a measured sip of his drink. The flash of amber pooling under rocks of ice caught Hisoka’s eye. The depth of color, the yellow thinness at the rim and the rich darkness underneath, familiar and hypnotizing. _Gon’s eyes_ , they thought all at once. _Exactly like his eyes_.

"Gon thinks friends are a safe investment," Illumi observed, after a moment. "After playing with dangerous things like my brother, and you too, he's a fool to think he can escape alive."

"Do you think so?"

Illumi blinked once, deliberately. “You _are_ going to fight him, aren’t you?”

Hisoka looked up. “Of course,” they said.

“Which means you’ll kill him,” Illumi concluded.

“Is that a compliment?”

“Hardly. I just know you too well. You always manage to survive.”

Neither of them had to articulate Illumi’s understanding here. If Hisoka won, because Hisoka always won, that would be the end of it. Since they were sixteen years old, they had only deigned to spare fighters who were inarguably more interesting alive than dead—Gon had already been spared too many times, and was hardly likely to go about causing the kind of chaos that would justify his continued existence. Hisoka was a creature driven by whims, but equally committed to seeing them each out. They had decided once that they would break Gon on the battlefield someday. That decision had driven half a decade of complicated, irrevocable choices.

Of course, Illumi had never really understood why some matches were more pressing and intimate than others, but that was the assassin for you. Wouldn't know what to do with a warm, intimate feeling if it held him down and choked him.

Illumi regarded them silently for a long moment, and then said, “Well, things have worked out precisely as you wanted."

“Haven’t they.”

Under Illumi’s expressionless scrutiny, Hisoka took another sip of their drink. With a little effort, you could taste the echoes of orange blossoms on the tongue. Hadn't it reminded them of kindness, once upon a time? A sweetness, once drunk up, lost altogether. How frivolous. 

“Never mind all that,” Hisoka said, at last. “Why don’t we talk business.”

 

 

So a week later, Hisoka pulled on their boots and left their hotel room, gliding through the crowds that passed below. It was barely past winter, and the city lay heavy with melt where the towering shadows of skyscrapers held sunlight at bay. A little more than six months ago Gon had left with his father's expedition force, while the seas to the north were still locked with ice. In his absence, the cold had seemed to linger—it was as if this thaw was the first since then, these early buds the first to bloom since he left. Hisoka could feel the awakening of the world vibrating even in their veins.

Spring was coming, and it was going to blast the ice from the very ground.

From what they had gathered, Gon would be with his friends at the Hunters Association headquarters, debriefing the investors and whatever other hunters had petitioned for intell regarding the mission. His father would have already filed whatever he was required to file and left town, if they could make him sit down long enough for even that. Perhaps Hisoka would set their sights on him next. Perhaps word of his son's death would be enough to crack that famous apathy. In any case, there was no chance of his interference now.

They arrived at the headquarters in a whirl of energy they could barely contain—both the security guards lifted their heads at the approach, like dogs scenting blood in the air. Hisoka smiled at them, eyes closing harmlessly, as they presented their license for examination. In the windows high above there was movement, barely more than shadows against the glare of the flickering sun. The guard on the left looked suspiciously from the card to Hisoka and back again, searching nen prickling around her fingertips.

"A conflict hunter?" she asked, handing it back to them at last.

"Commandment number one: a hunter must hunt something," Hisoka shrugged as they slipped it back into their pocket. "I was told I could fill in the 'other' option if I wanted."  

The two guards looked at each other. "Well," the first said, "everything does seem to be in order..."

"If you're planning to cause trouble," the other said, lifting her chin, "you'd be better off not even going in."

"Little old me?" Hisoka hummed. They flexed their aura, swelling it with the heavy sweetness of anticipation so that it burst over both of the guards, thick and sudden, and then allowed it to subside. "Do I seem like someone out to cause trouble?"

Both of them had curled backwards in a flinch that looked maybe one twitch away from retaliation, probably contemplating the old wisdom that the best defense was a quick offense. But Hisoka only cocked one hip to the side and waited in silence. Slowly, the two women uncurled. The first one to snap back into her businesslike manner turned and punched a button on the wall just behind her, nen flashing smartly around her thumb.

"You can go," she said, "there's no rule against being an asshole, unfortunately." The other one shot her a look. "What? Once he's in there he's somebody else's problem."

Hisoka sauntered past them as the door buzzed open, passing directly between a heated silent conversation that appeared to be conducted entirely in eyebrow movements, and left the tedious outside world behind. Inside, the lobby was vaulted and silent—above that, they knew, the upper floors were alive with sleepless work. They took an elevator up past the ebb of overlapping auras on floor after floor, all but salivating as it washed past them. _Thirty_ , the little light above the doors blinked.

Hisoka smoothed a hand over their hair, applying unnecessary Texture Surprise to the perfectly coifed locks. They were so close, so _close_ , and the proximity was buzzing inside them like a living thing. The elevator dinged. Hisoka stilled the trembling of their fingertips forcibly, carefully resculpting their posture into an acceptable mixture of keen and casual. Wouldn't do to look too eager too early.

The doors rolled open, and like the curtains of a theater they revealed the startled face of Leorio Paladiknight. There was a cup of coffee clutched in his left hand. Hisoka fixed him with the full wattage of one attentive, curious smile. The cup slipped a millimeter down in his petrified grip.

"What a pleasant surprise," Hisoka said, tipping their head an interested fraction of an angle. "Don't you look grown-up. Aren’t you a Zodiac these days? How old are you now?"

"25," he said, blankly, and then recoiled in a full-body flinch that brought his coffee up protectively against his chest, scooching a couple of feet backwards from the elevator. "You—" he said, "What are _you_ doing here?"

Hisoka caught the door as it attempted to slide closed again and stepped out, pouting dramatically. "I _am_ a member, you know. I'm starting to feel a little unwanted."

"That's probably because nobody wants you," Leorio retorted, his cup still clutched against his chest. There was a little dark stain the size of a thumbnail where drink had splashed up through the lid and onto his suit jacket.

For a moment, Hisoka considered killing him. Not because he had a smart mouth—actually, Hisoka was very fond of that feature—but because they still hadn’t settled on a plan of attack to begin this endeavor. Gon would take some coaxing, that was a certainty. Hisoka had no interest in pursuing another reticent opponent across the planet, cajoling as they continuously retreated. Quite frankly, they had grown fed up with coquetry. They wanted Gon to come for them, or to stand his ground at the very least. Killing Gon’s friend, in cold blood, would guarantee them the full force of retribution.

“What a lucky thing to run into you just now,” they said, plucking the cup from his hands. It came away reluctantly, sloshing against the force of the pull. Hisoka held it out away from them both, dangling it precariously, as they reached out with their free hand and tugged a few wrinkles from the collar of Leorio’s jacket.

The man batted their hand away and finished straightening his jacket by himself, hunched defensively. “What’s lucky about it?”

Though it wouldn’t do to be too hasty. There were a multitude of factors to consider, weren’t there? The location: the association itself would make things very tricky for anyone who committed outright murder on the premises. Then there was the matter of efficacy: would Gon fight harder to avenge a dead friend, or to prevent a friend’s death?

They handed the coffee cup back. Or rather, they allowed it to be snatched from their hand. “I’m looking for Gon. Perhaps you’ve seen him recently?”

Leorio looked up from his cup, which he appeared to be inspecting for poison. It would have been a laughable paranoia, if Hisoka wasn’t perfectly capable of having tampered with the drink even in that small window of time. “Oh,” he said. He straightened up, all his hunched suspicion evaporating like so much mist. He really did cut a fine figure, when he put his game face on. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. Maybe this _is_ lucky.”

“ _You_ wanted to talk to _me_ ,” Hisoka echoed, with some interest. The charms on their earrings swung merrily.

“About Gon,” Leorio said.

Hisoka waited silently, watching Leorio visibly gathering up his nerve to take a running jump at the topic. He took a fast, heavy sip of his coffee without seeming to taste it.

“Look,” he said, not yet looking up, “I know you were… seeing him.”

“Ah,” Hisoka said, “this is the conversation where you stand on the doorstep with your shotgun and tell me to think carefully about my actions.”

“Huh? Well, no, I mean—” here he looked up, at last, with the least pretentious kind of solemnity Hisoka had ever observed on him, “—if you fuck up, you'll be sorry. But that’s not really where I was going with this.”

“You don’t think I’m a danger to him?” they inquired.

“Why would you hurt someone who loves you?” Leorio shrugged. “I’ve never really understood how _anybody_ could do something like that. I’ll leave it up to other people to judge whether you’re the type.”

 _I could explain it to you_ , Hisoka thought, still smiling blandly, _but something tells me you still wouldn’t understand_.

“What I wanted to ask you,” he went on, “was whether you’re serious about all this. Because if you are… if you want to make him happy… maybe you’d consider moving closer?”

For the first time in quite a long time, Hisoka found themself at an honest loss for words. Of all the potential moments that they might have predicted unraveling from the first “oh,” of this conversation, this was by far the last. Leorio and his persistent ability to surprise.

“This is why I like you,” they said, at last.

“Huh,” the Zodiac muttered into his drink. “I never did understand why you were interested in me.”

“No?”

Leorio spun a hand aimlessly. “Everybody knows Gon is a powerhouse, and Killua was trained by assassins, and Kurapika—I mean, who wouldn’t be interested in Kurapika? Me, I’m just a med student who needed fast cash. _I’m_ sure not gonna fight you.”

“You surprise me,” Hisoka said. “That’s a rare and valuable quality in a person, if you want my modest opinion.” They took back the coffee cup and sipped lightly on the cooling liquid as Leorio sputtered and wrung his hands.

“Anyways,” they finished, dropping the cup back into his grip, “if you can’t direct me to Gon I suppose I’ll just wander until I can locate the sound of shouting.” They turned, setting their sights on a likely looking corridor, and made to leave in that direction.

“Wait!” Leorio called. “You didn’t tell me yet!”

Hisoka turned their head, glancing over their shoulder.

“How serious are you about this?” Leorio asked. He hadn’t moved from that spot, but he didn’t need to.

“Hmm.” Hisoka looked upward at nothing in particular. A memory flickered through them with no clear relevance: the echo of the hotel room, in Meteor, and their knee sunk into the comforter of Gon’s bed as they loomed above him. The sensation of his hair between their fingers. An odd memory, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. “Aren’t I always serious?” they replied. “Deadly, really.”

And then they carried on walking, leaving Leorio and the inevitable second half of his question behind.

 

 

Gon, as it turned out, was in a conference room overlooking the roofs of downtown, his back to the door. The trail Hisoka followed was actually the heavy twang of power, thick in the air like so much coppery mist. They paused at the door, a hand over the wood—they could feel the thrum of human bodies and human voices on the other side. And somewhere in the midst of it, Gon. Their heart fluttered.

The hinges swung silently, revealing a semicircular panel of interviewers. At their head was Gon. He had his hands open, gesticulating earnestly to the men and women in front of him, but their eyes had all lifted to stare at Hisoka the moment the door opened. A guard who had been slouching against the wide window snapped to attention.

"Oh dear," Hisoka said, "am I interrupting something?"

Gon stilled in his seat, and then he whirled, knocking the whole thing over as he leapt to his feet. "Hisoka!" he said, clambering bodily over the railing that separated the entrance from the interview pit. His thighs flexed as he sprung from it.

Hisoka had never felt desire like the flood of it that rushed through them then, wild and sudden and consuming whole swaths of themself in its relentless path. They reached out and caught Gon’s hands as he skated forward over the smooth floor, drawing him and all his kenetic energy to meet their chest with a heavy _thump_ that rattled both of their ribcages. Excitement lit them inside and out, as they lifted a hand to cup the young man’s cheek. How dreary the world had been in his absence.

“Oh, _what_ a surprise,” they said, “Fancy meeting you here.”

He had grown. Still a bit shorter than Hisoka, but squared and powerful and finished in a way that he had not been when he left the winter before. His skin was dark with sunshine, muscles corded from difficult living—he was desire itself, physical and hot to the touch. Hisoka licked their lips, mouth suddenly dry with want.

It was difficult to even process the depth of the feeling threatening to overwhelm them. If they did not fight him immediately, they decided, they would certainly drown.

“Who are all these gentlepeople?” Hisoka asked, glancing back up at the panel of interviewers. Their myriad startled expressions blinked back. Either this was an extremely unorthodox interruption, or those people had some passing familiarity with Hisoka, or most probably both.

“Oh!” Gon said, drawing back. “They’re asking me about Ging’s expedition. He didn’t want to stay, so he told me I could answer everybody’s questions for him.”

“How thoughtful of him,” Hisoka remarked. How should they extricate Gon from the interview? They were a patient person but not _that_ patient, not today. Perhaps they could—

“Hey,” Gon said, turning back to the room, “I’m gonna go now, okay?”

Hisoka raised their brows at him, but he wasn’t paying attention. The room at large muttered uncertainly and shuffled a bit, until at last one man in a suit stood from his seat at the center of the semi-circle.

“Mr. Freecs,” the man said, “we’re not done yet. Please sit back down, this won’t take much longer.”

Gon smiled at them. It was the smile that said, _I respect that you want the thing, but I am definitely not going to give you the thing_. “You can email me anything else,” he said. “Beans will pass out my address.”

There was a dull crash of protests behind him, then, but Gon had visibly lost interest in all of that. He turned back to Hisoka and said, “Let me tell you about my trip.”

Hisoka glanced over the range of faces, some of them red with frustration and some of them just bewildered, checking their schedules and notes, and shrugged broadly. “Well,” they said. “ _If_ you insist.”

 

 

As they walked through the city, on their way to the park at the center of the city, Gon told them all about the expedition. Hisoka admittedly processed very little of it, between the anticipation of battle and the nearness of the thing they wanted most in the world. Everything was immediate; the future beyond the next five minutes almost impossible to even consider. It was at times like these that Hisoka remembered what it meant to be truly present, to truly have shape and form against the weight of passing time. They looked up, to the distant shadow of the park’s iron fence, and tried to keep their heartbeat steady. The coldness of the morning was dripping away into shadows, all around them, as if Gon’s physical presence were thawing the earth.

They became slowly aware of a lull that had fallen between the two of them, and looked over to see Gon with his eyes on the sky, smiling faintly. If Hisoka had ever felt like this before, it must have been when they were still a child—before life became hard under their fingernails, before the blood and the exhaustion. What could anyone do with an emotion like this, they wondered, except tear and be torn at until the floods subsided?

“I saw that dashing Leorio earlier,” Hisoka said. “He is a kind one, isn’t he? Soft. To see a world of strength like ours… and not to pursue it…”

“He wants to help people,” Gon said, “that’s all.”

“And yet,” Hisoka countered, glancing at Gon out the corner of their eye, “his desire to help others has left him somewhat helpless, hasn’t it?”

Gon frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Ah, but it has.” Hisoka lifted a finger, as if they were delivering a lesson in a classroom. “When someone is surrounded by power but has very little of it themself, that someone makes themself a little fish among sharks. If it weren’t for the general attitude of goodwill he’s garnered for himself, Leorio could be picked off at almost any moment.”

Gon made a thoughtful face, walking with the same gentle gait as before. Ah, Hisoka should have known better than to be subtle.

“In fact,” they went on, “I myself could kill him with little effort, if no one was there to protect him.”

“That’s true,” Gon said, easily.

The gates of the park were growing more detailed as they walked onwards, proximity revealing twining iron leaves along the arch. It seemed a waste of effort to garnish such a boring, unimpressive structure.

“But you _are_ there to protect him, aren’t you,” Hisoka continued. “Would you do anything to keep your friend safe, Gon?”

“Sure. You know that. I’ll do anything for any of you.”

“But suppose,” Hisoka said, trailing a nail over the posts of the entrance arch, “one person you cared for proved a danger to another that you care for. You would have to rank them, then.”

Gon pursed his lips. “I don’t want to rank anybody. I’d just make it so that neither of them were a danger to the others.”

“You’d make it so,” Hisoka echoed. A pang of warmth shot through their chest, unexpected and sudden.

“Yeah.” Gon’s boots crunched on pebbles and leaves that had scattered across their path.

“You are stubborn,” Hisoka mused, “but I never blink first.”

“Huh? You?”

The path here was lined with cherry trees, each of them pale and heavy with unopened buds. Hisoka reached up and plucked one from the branch, unpeeling the tight knot of pink petals as they walked.

“Let’s say I meant to kill Leorio,” they replied, “let’s say that I intended to do it today, after I left here. Do you think you could mediate that conflict?”

“But why would you kill Leorio?” Gon said. “You like him. And he’s not very strong, you said it yourself.”

The air was full of potential answers, all of them quiet and insistent as the breeze. Hisoka plucked a petal from the flower in their hand and cast it aside. It would be easier if Gon could hate them, and the simplest way to achieve that end would be to lie. People often hurt others when they fell out of love. They could convince Gon that they did not love him anymore. They could pretend to be cold, as well as cruel.

But the whole point of this exercise was to become closer, the closest they could possibly be, and Hisoka found this particular lie dissatisfying.  

“Because I can,” they said. “Because it’s my nature.”

Gon was looking at them now, searching for something in their keen expression. “You want me to tell you which side I would take, but couldn’t. I don’t believe you’d do something like that for no reason.”

“Ah,” they sighed, “you’re too trusting for hypotheticals, it would seem.” Hisoka turned and took Gon’s face in their hands. His bones were solid under their grip, the lovely square of his jaw itself a challenge to all Hisoka’s power. Their fingers itched to crack it apart, to feel the resistance give way beneath them. Gon let them tug his face upwards, pliable and willing and utterly unguarded.

“Gon, my love,” they said, “the moment I leave this park, I’m going to return to the association and kill our mutual friend Leorio. You have two choices: you can let me go, and be responsible for his death, or you can strike me down right here and save his life.”

Gon’s lips parted, silent and soft with confusion, and Hisoka resisted the temptation to press a kiss onto their sweet bow. Better not to confuse the boy.

“I can’t think how terrible it would be to discover that your own friend left you to die,” Hisoka added, thrumming with almost overwhelming desire. “Imagine the look on his face when he realizes that you allowed a monster to eat him alive.”

“But—” Gon said. He pressed his own hands over Hisoka’s, his flesh summer-hot. “Are you doing this because I—did I do something wrong?”

“Oh,” Hisoka breathed, “Gon, you are _so_ good, you are so perfect and bright. But you knew this day was coming didn’t you?”

“But I thought you—”

Hisoka gave up holding back and seared their lips to Gon’s mouth, still parted and uncertain and even now, unresisting. They pulled back sooner than they would have on any other day, relishing the way Gon unconsciously followed them forward, chasing the kiss. His nails were digging into the skin of Hisoka’s hands now.

“It was a good plan,” Hisoka said, with a conciliatory smile. “But I never go back once I decide, and I’ve wanted this since the day I saw you.”

“Plan—” Gon echoed.

“Sweetening me up,” they said. “It didn’t work, but it was worth a shot. Anyways, you’re strong enough now that you don’t need to bother keeping me sated. Don’t waste your effort domesticating what you have the means to exterminate.”

Let’s see, where would the best ground be to start with? There was an ancient looking bolder a little ways back, that should be good high ground if a retreat became necessary. The ground beyond that fell off in a steep grassy incline towards another concrete path.

“I do love you, you know,” Hisoka said, turning on their heel. Ten paces should do it. “But my love has never been something people escape alive.”

Gon was quiet for a moment. “You know, when Kurapika heard I was dating you,” he said, at last, as Hisoka came to a stop, “he asked me to please think carefully about what I was doing. He said, don't sacrifice your happiness for your safety. Like I was only doing it to put a leash on you. He kept talking about acceptable risks and—”

Gon looked down. It was strange to see him look away first, to look away from anything at all. But his eyes were on his hands.

“Kurapika was only saying that because it's how he sees the world. Risk, sacrifice. I thought you would know better, but... I guess that's the world to you too.”

Gon pulled off his jacket under the shade of the cherry tree, the multitudes of buds above him on the verge of bursting wide open any day now. He held it in his hands for a moment, studying some mystery in the meticulous hand-sewn stitches. Then he looked up. There was a stormy heaviness behind his impassive features.

“No rules,” he said.

“Of course,” Hisoka answered.

The jacket landed in a heap over the roots of the tree. Gon rolled his shoulders, running through an abbreviated list of his usual stretches from their past spars. Usually he lingered in each of them, taking one after the other into ridiculous extremes just to see how far he could go. Once, in a match just before he left the continent, he had sprung up from a cartwheel to land with a hand on each of Hisoka’s shoulders, suspended upside-down there above them, like Alice falling through the rabbit hole. He had been so dark against the blueness of the sky, eclipsing the sun with his body.

His mouth now was a grim line. It sent a swirl of uneasiness through the excitement that had filled Hisoka, muddled and swallowed like white drops in red paint.

“You know,” Gon said, with no particular inflection, “after all these years I've still never figured out what makes you mad.”

“Me?” Hisoka said. “Why would you want to know that?”

Gon fixed them with a look as cool as the unmoving surface of a lake. “Aunt Mito used to say that the best way to know someone is to find out what makes them angry,” he said. “By that logic, I’ve never really known you.”

Hisoka flipped a card into their hand, hiding their lips behind it like a lady’s fan. “I don’t really get angry,” they said. “Anger is a reaction to not seeing what you expect to see. I don’t expect anything anymore.”

For a moment, Gon was quiet, and then he blurred into motion, driving straight at Hisoka with a fist that Hisoka spun to evade—they kicked out for Gon, who should have been ungrounded in the midst of throwing that punch, but their heel only met empty air.

“Well, I’m mad,” Gon said, from a few feet left of where he should have been. Hisoka looked over their shoulder, to where Gon was standing now, with his boots dug into the furrows of the grass. “So I guess you know more about me than I know about you,” he finished, “just like always.”

He was faster. He was sharper. He was captivating, with his cold features giving way to scowling distress. Hisoka drank him in like whiskey, a taste that burned from the inside out. The burn had long ago ceased to be either good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant—all that remained was the overwhelming sensation, preferable to cold and to thirst.

Gon moved like fire over the grass, twisting and leaping. Perhaps Hisoka was water, given to damming and flooding and skirting the paths of least resistance towards their goal. Gon blazed through everything in his way, like a forest fire whose tongues licked the highest branches.

Dark heat, like the heart of a star, gathered between Gon’s hands.

He had told Hisoka how Ja-janken got its name, once, under the shadow of an oak that grew at the outskirts of town. His hands had been singed raw, that day, pink and lined with white where dead skin had already begun to flake. The memory of it lasted only a moment, like the flicker of a dying projector, but it was long enough that Hisoka barely dodged in time. The earth blurred green under them as they flipped up over the blow, hands touching down on Gon’s shoulders just long enough to suspend their flight. Gon looked up at them as they went, unsurprised and unworried.

It would have been a hit, they realized. It would have been a hit, except that Gon had pulled his punch at the last moment.

They landed in a crouch behind him, palms flat to the grass.

“That’s no good,” they lamented, “you’ll never get anywhere like that.”

Gon drew himself back up, squared his shoulders. “I don’t want to kill you.”

Hisoka frowned. “Come now, that’s not fun. What’s the point if you’re not giving it your all? Maybe I’m not giving you enough incentive… I suppose I could just kill them all and then find you again—I could try Killua next? He is your favorite, I know he is.”

“But then you wouldn’t be able to fight him later,” Gon pointed out.

“That’s true, I did think about that before. But I don’t care so much what order this is done in, as long as it gets done.”

“If you were going to do all that just to make me hate you, though, you would have already done it.”

For a moment it was as if none of the anger or the betrayal had ever been—it was just the two of them in the grass and the sunlight, each trying to outthink their lover in a hypothetical game of strategy, pouncing on one idea after another. That was good, that was the way it ought to be between them. If Hisoka could have it both ways—both the joy and the killing edge—

Gon’s brightness dulled again. The wind cut through the avenue of cherry trees, shaking its heavy buds.

“Hisoka,” Gon said, “is this really what you want?”

“Of course it’s what I want. It’s in my nature.” Hisoka tapped their incisors, nail clicking against enamel. “Think about your panthers. We do what we are made to do. You know as well as anyone that the world is a cruel place.”

“Nature is cruel,” Gon replied, “but creatures are kind.”

More white paint in the red. Uneasiness diluted excitement and muddied it, leaving the biological fact of adrenaline and no perfect way to trace its reason for being. This was not at all what Hisoka wanted. They weren’t getting anywhere like this. “Let me live and I _will_ kill Killua,” they said, in a leaden tone that brooked no further argument. 

“If you hurt Killua—”

“Go on,” Hisoka purred, “say you’ll never forgive me. I know you Gon, I can hear it whether you say so or not.”

But Gon only drew back further. His hand lifted, vague and absent as a ghost, to settle over his own arm.

“I’ve said, ‘I’ll never forgive you’, to so many people,” Gon said, clutching the meat of his shoulder as if the whole thing would peel from the bone without his grip. “So many times.”

“It’s a charming stubbornness,” Hisoka replied.

Gon shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’ve said it so many times but—I’ve forgiven all of them. In time. I’ve learned not to say ‘never’.”

Hisoka flipped a trio of aces into their hand. “Fine,” they said. “If you won’t come for me, then I’ll come for you.”

They dove, the toes of their boots scoring dark gashes in the earth below them. Clearly letting Gon talk was doing nobody any good—a miscalculation to begin with, he had always been much too keen on _understanding_ people. Better to put him on the defensive. Gon was competitive and hated to lose; it shouldn’t be too egregiously difficult to tease him upwards into a real fight. He was stronger now, possibly stronger than he knew.

Their forearm cracked against Gon’s, bone shouting against bone. Gon swung back with a blistering blow—just as they suspected, even pulling his punches Gon was at a killing strength. Hisoka grinned as they turned the momentum of the blow aside, sweeping in beneath it. It shouldn’t be too hard to make his control slip.

They spun, the path of their feet like the circle of a waltz as they dodged Gon’s punches. Each retreat carried a blow of its own, the exchange of strikes leading them both into a furious dance.

Hisoka had taken him dancing once—this memory came on with the insistence of a concussive blow, causing them to nearly miss a step—it had been a rainy night, unsuitable for wandering the countryside, and on a whim Hisoka had brought him to a club just a block away from the tower of the arena. No one had ever bothered to teach Gon how to dance, but then, no one had ever taught Hisoka either. Fighters learn by watching and so, too, do dancers. Gon had split the darkness open, the motion of his palms through the air like a cleaving force, teeth brilliant under the blacklights.

Hisoka leapt away, all at once, drawing back into the shade of a cherry. Where was their head today? There was a time for reminiscing, and a time for _focusing_.

Gon came after them, chasing the fight the way he had chased Hisoka’s kiss, and Hisoka’s body sang with renewed desire. _Yes_ , come here, come _on_.

In a flurry of strikes, Gon’s palm made contact with their shoulder—Hisoka skidded backwards through the grass, heels kicking up grass and earth. They swayed upright, breath coming fast now, watching Gon draw back for the next attack.

“Come on,” Hisoka sang out, “Gon, you’re so delicious like this, you must feel it too—you’re meant for this, for me—”

They aimed a kick high, even as Gon feinted low. Their boot glanced off Gon’s chest with a heavy shock that rattled bones all the way through their body. Gon recoiled and lunged, gorgeous and for just a moment thinking of nothing but the next strike.

“Forget the others,” they said, catching the punch in mid-air. “Forget them. Fight me because you want to, because you’re like me—“

They sank their nails into the skin, tearing deep bloody swaths down the back of Gon’s hand as he reeled backwards.

“Fight me because I hurt you,” Hisoka said, and sucked a sliver of bloody flesh from their nail.

Blood dripped slowly, as if it wasn’t quite sure whether to fall, from Gon’s knuckles. He frowned. Hisoka felt again that they were being pulled in, taken apart under the unblinking force of that gaze, and shivered.

“If I win,” he said, at last. “I get to decide how you die.”

Hisoka licked the pads of their fingers. “If you can win without killing me immediately,” they said, a bit skeptical. “If you can, then I suppose that’s equally fair.”

“Okay,” Gon said, and nodded, and threw himself back into the fray.

Once before they had sparred with powers, and it had nearly leveled the hill where they usually went to fight. Ja-janken split oaks and powdered the boulders that glaciers had left unmoved since ten thousand years before. Hisoka had spent most of their time turning the force of Gon’s attacks against him, spinning him like a top. Now Gon was a little too fast to be spun, a little too smart to be snagged in gum. The explosive force of his blows melted and snapped Hisoka’s nen wherever the two touched; it was as if a spider was trying to wrap something all talons and teeth, something that split the web as soon as it closed.

The air was full of ash, the trees shaking under the gale of each concussive burst. A moan bubbled up through them, irresistible under the loveliness Gon’s killing intent.

Here was the truth, the truth that Illumi had been considerate enough not to voice and that Gon was too inexperienced to understand: Hisoka had plateaued. There was only so much potential in a single body. It needed to be now, while they were still at their best, while they could still do everything they were accustomed to doing without effort. The prospect of losing whatever they had worked to gain—even a long way in the future, even in small enough increments that they might not even notice it go—put all their old goals in a new and unpleasantly urgent light.

It had to be now. There was no time to second guess themself.

Gon let loose a scorching blast against Hisoka’s upper arm, as the two of them tumbled backwards, and Hisoka’s vision filled with light so bright that it turned the world before and after it to darkness. They caught the brunt of the explosion on the thin layer of Texture Surprise over the skin there—a mundane application they performed every morning, to keep the sun off their too-pale skin—and managed to keep the limb in one piece. The flesh bloomed red and charred black, but held. Hisoka’s heart stuttered. Gon pressed forward, without hesitation, leaving no space to breathe or recoup. He seemed to draw determination from the partially thwarted blow, pushing himself harder and harder until he landed a strike against the other arm, where that skin blistered as well and the tattered nen fell away in flakes.

That was where the tide of the fight turned. With both arms out of commission, guarding was a thousand times more difficult—Gon drove them back step by step, relentless, until their back thumped against sun-hot stone. They kicked out, trying to make a space for themself to retreat through, but met only terrible heat and light—their ankle fairly glowed in Gon's grip—

Pain, ever a distant and unremarkable thing, rolled upward from the devastation under Gon’s clutching fist. Hisoka arched up off the stone behind them, mouth opening on a syllable of surprise, adoration coursing through them like venom in the blood. Gon drove his knee into their chest, knocked the wind from their lungs and effectively pinned them in place. They managed to fight back their body's involuntary arch, just enough to look down at Gon’s leaden expression as he drew his hands back into a familiar formation. Hisoka wished, vaguely, that they could work their arms again, if just long enough to touch the creases of that charming frown.

Another glowing star began its bloom from nebula to full lethal growth between Gon’s hands. A killing blow. Hisoka turned their options over in their mind, scanning the terrain for an out. The ground offered nothing. The stone offered nothing. The sky offered indifferent blue. Hisoka sighed and relaxed. Checkmate. Good game.

“I win,” Gon said, breathing hard against the strain of the umpteenth Ja-janken of that morning.

An opening? Hisoka threw themself against the pinning force of Gon’s knee, almost managing to break free before—oof. “It seems you do,” they said, falling back.

“Which means I get to pick,” Gon continued, “how you die.”

Hisoka eyed the point of contained fire in his hands. “I conceded that, yes.”

Gon looked at them. They wished Gon had just _done_ it already, all this waiting was only taking them out of the moment.  If it were Hisoka who held him pinned now, if it were Hisoka who had won the day, they would luxuriate in their victory, they would lean in here for a kiss—but Gon would never, not now.

The light abruptly blinked out from Gon’s paired hands. Instead, he crossed them over his chest. “Then I decide,” he said, “you’ll die defending yourself, years from now, with a happy life behind you.”

Hisoka narrowed their eyes. “That’s not how this works,” they said.

“That _is_ how it works,” Gon said, breaking into a sudden smile. He looked insufferably pleased with himself. “You said I get to pick, so I picked.”

“But,” Hisoka said, “your friends.”

Gon tilted his head. “Do you think you’re the first person to threaten my friends?” he asked. His smile softened, turning fond. “I’ll fight you every day if I have to, with everything I’ve got—if I have to spend every day of the rest of my life with you, I will. I’ll keep Leorio and the others safe. But I won’t ever kill you.”

Hisoka—the mess of sensations inside of them, the stale adrenaline and the undeniable tug of adoration that pulled at them every time Gon smiled, and confusion, interest—Hisoka had to pause for a moment before they could speak with any confidence. They licked their lips.

“Weren’t you angry with me?”

Gon nodded, still smiling. “I was,” he said. “Because you underestimated how much I care about you. But I’ve knocked you around enough, we’re even.”

Hisoka lifted their brows.

“I won your life. It’s mine now,” Gon said. His certainty was a gravitation all its own, a force of nature. He uncrossed his arms, reached down, and took Hisoka’s motionless hands in his. “You can share it with me.”

Hisoka thought, without wanting to, of moscato, and sunlight. “That’s generous of you,” they said.

“Not really,” Gon replied, like he always did. He lifted Hisoka’s hands to his chest. “Think of it as something you haven’t tried yet. You’ve lived with killing people you loved before. Now you can live with letting someone you love _not_ kill you.”

Hisoka sighed. “I should have known,” they said. “You always manage to get your way, somehow.”

If Gon’s smile had been bright before, it was nothing compared to this. Hisoka felt almost dazed by it, scoured as raw as if Gon had released that final strike after all. It would very nearly have been worth letting him win just to see this. Gon pulled them up, slung one of their arms over his shoulder. Now that the battle was over, Hisoka was growing aware of the sounds of sirens in the distance, and the vague shapes of spectators hovering behind the relative safety of the iron gate, which ran along the hill behind the cherry trees. The ground in every direction was scarred black with turned dirt.

“Okay,” Gon said, “first things first, I’m calling Leorio. You need medical attention.”

“That’s a bit ironic considering how I came to be in this state,” Hisoka observed.

“Hmm." Gon frowned, sticky fingers tapping against Hisoka's arm. "Well I guess we don’t have to tell him you were gonna kill him… I mean, I won’t if you won’t.”

Hisoka hung over Gon’s shoulder, allowing their nose to brush the dark hair behind his ear. “What makes you think I won’t go through with my threats as soon as he’s within striking range?”

Gon paused, midway through laboriously typing a number into his phone with one hand. “Look,” he said, “I know what you said before, but I don’t think this is your nature. I don’t know who told you it was, but they were wrong. Your nature is to be happy, and you can’t be happy if you’re dead. And you wouldn’t be happy if I died either.”

Gon smelled of sweat and sunshine, and the curious warmth of human skin. The presumptuous little monster. Together they made a slow progress towards the park’s exit, awkward and a little frustrating. Hisoka had never in their life had to rely to physically on another person to get where they were going. It made the full brutal tally of their injuries hyper-real in a way that no other fight had ever left them. Hisoka sighed again, their breath ruffling stray hair.

“How can you still be so kind?” they asked.

“...I’ve never really told you about it,” Gon said, his expression clouding for a moment, “but when I was fourteen I experienced the most terrible pain you can experience. I thought I had killed a friend. It was devastating, it nearly destroyed me. But now I’m older, and I survived that, and I know that if I survived that then I can survive anything.”

He hit the _call_ button. There was a faint sound of ringing as he pressed it to the ear between them, as if he was trying to share the call with Hisoka. After a moment, the line picked up.

“ _This is Leorio_ ,” the tiny voice said, sounding vaguely distracted.

“Hi Leorio,” Gon said, “it’s me. Can you come down to Central Park? Hisoka needs a doctor and I don’t want to take them to a hospital. I don’t think it would go well.”

“ _What—! Do I sound like a private nurse to you?”_

Hisoka listened with half an ear to the conversation as it unfolded. So. No one was going to die today. They _had_ gotten their fight, though, and it had been everything they imagined, brutal and big and loud. They watched Gon’s lips moving, smiling for an unseeing audience. They were beginning to suspect that they had never really understood Gon, for all that he seemed like an open book.

They turned his words over in their head. For the rest of his life? With everything he had?

Gon pulled the phone from his ear and pressed another button. “There,” he said, dropping the thing into his pocket, “he’ll be here in just a minute. Actually I think he’s curious, he’s never seen you injured before.”

There was blood smeared across his chin, dark like cherry syrup. Above him, one bud on a low-hanging bough had burst into early bloom. As he half-dragged Hisoka along, it brushed against his hair and fell, spinning, to the grass. It occurred to them that, if Gon had his way, there would be still more springs. More blooms like that one, not precisely alike but living all the same—a taste once drunk up, easily refilled. Perhaps it would be interesting to live differently, at least for a while.

“You know,” Hisoka said, “it will be difficult to keep an eye on me if we live as far apart as we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leorio actually shouted a lot and acted like the world was ending when he found out Gon was dating the Monster Clown but now he acts like it's nbd and he was supportive about it the whole time
> 
> Stay tuned for a sequel, if you're interested in that. It'll just be a oneshot but I know at least one person will be thrilled with it. My tumblr is sauntervaguelydown.tumblr.com if you wanna come shout at me in the mean time.


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